As you can in other fields, you can learn a lot by studying what the leaders do, understanding it, and imitating it.
You've got to get away from people who say "We can't do it the way Google or Amazon does it because they're big and they can afford it." You've got to think instead "Google and Amazon are big because they did things right."
You've still got to think about (small) scale though.
Back around 2000 I was interested in user management and authentication and back then the main challenge across the industry was conversion rate, and it was very good to imitate what Yahoo did.
A few years later, Yahoo's signup and login process had become quite complicated because they had a notoriously foolish user base that was vulnerable to fraud and phishing. If you imitated them you'd quadruple your development costs, kill your conversion rate, and get your email box flooded from people who forgot their passwords.
(Funny, Yahoo started to go downhill around they time they did this!)
So look at the leaders and think about what they do critically. Don't listen to voices that say "we can't afford it" -- you can't afford to have employees that are lazy like that or for that matter, to be working for a project manager who won't do what it takes for your projects to succeed.
You've got to get away from people who say "We can't do it the way Google or Amazon does it because they're big and they can afford it." You've got to think instead "Google and Amazon are big because they did things right."
You've still got to think about (small) scale though.
Back around 2000 I was interested in user management and authentication and back then the main challenge across the industry was conversion rate, and it was very good to imitate what Yahoo did.
A few years later, Yahoo's signup and login process had become quite complicated because they had a notoriously foolish user base that was vulnerable to fraud and phishing. If you imitated them you'd quadruple your development costs, kill your conversion rate, and get your email box flooded from people who forgot their passwords.
(Funny, Yahoo started to go downhill around they time they did this!)
So look at the leaders and think about what they do critically. Don't listen to voices that say "we can't afford it" -- you can't afford to have employees that are lazy like that or for that matter, to be working for a project manager who won't do what it takes for your projects to succeed.