“Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talks logistics.” — Military proverb
In my earlier blog, I reflected on the classic debate about waterfall vs. Agile. Both models offer strengths—structure and planning on one hand, and adaptability and speed on the other. But real-world product development doesn’t operate in absolutes. That’s why I proposed a Hybrid model that borrows the discipline of Waterfall and the flexibility of Agile, aligning product teams with both long-term vision and short-term responsiveness.
Today, I want to highlight what makes this hybrid approach work: Logistics.
It’s not just operations or tooling but a full-stack system of enablers—the often-invisible infrastructure that allows product teams to scale sustainably and strategically.
The Four Pillars of the Hybrid Model
Based on my experience, to have a successful hybrid model, there are four key pillars:
- Strategic Alignment – Alignment of the organization’s and product’s vision with respective teams’ yearly and quarterly plans and cloud OKRs.
- Clear Accountability – Establishing roles, responsibilities, and decision-making boundaries of the team. It is easier said than done!!
- Rapid Iteration – Empowering feature teams to experiment, learn, and adapt based on the learnings.
- Robust Logistics – Creating the underlying infrastructure and systems that make everything else possible.
What Do I Mean by Logistics in This Context?
Logistics is more than release planning or DevOps. It is an enabler that enables teams to move fast without breaking and align across geographies, domains, or functions. In the Hybrid model, logistics is the glue between strategy and execution. In most places, either strategy folks don’t know about real-world challenges, or execution focused folks don’t see the whole picture.
The Logistics Ecosystem: Real-World Examples
Let’s break it down further with examples:
- Scaling Design Systems
- Emphasize multiple design options with pros and cons
- Identify design selection criteria with different weightage.
- Alignment of the proposed design with the rest of the established design and architecture philosophy.
- Without this, scaling a product across teams leads to chaos and rework.
- Operational Readiness
- Releases don’t stop at feature complete. Are analytics tags added? Are support teams trained? Is there a rollback strategy? Is there a rollout strategy?
- Logistics ensure that launches are smooth, measurable, and reversible.
- Decision Journals and Context Logs
- Capture the “why” behind decisions — trade-offs made, data considered, assumptions stated.
- This builds organizational memory, supports onboarding, and prevents repeating mistakes.
- Tooling and Automation
- Think CI/CD pipelines, alerting systems, test coverage, feature toggles, experimentation frameworks.
- Cross-Team Coordination Frameworks
- Shared rituals like demos, review syncs, and asynchronous updates build alignment without micromanagement.
Why Logistics Is Essential to the Hybrid Model
The magic of the proposed Hybrid model is balance:
- Move fast, but stay aligned.
- Plan big, but execute small.
- Empower teams, but ensure consistency.
- System and process over individuals
This balance only works when the logistics are strong. Most of the time, things can be built without Logistics, but in my experience, they always end in chaos or get stuck in slow-moving bureaucracy. Then, firefighters are needed to help solve the chaos. Unfortunately, amateur organizations celebrate these firefighters instead of reflecting and focusing on logistics.
Interactive Exercise: Assess Your Logistics Maturity
Rate your organization’s logistics maturity in each area from 1-5:
- Design Systems: ___ /5
- Operational Readiness: ___ /5
- Decision Documentation: ___ /5
- Tooling & Automation: ___ /5
- Cross-Team Coordination: ___ /5
Total Score Interpretation:
- 20-25: Logistics Leader
- 15-19: Strong Foundation
- 10-14: Developing Systems
- 5-9: Significant Gaps
- <5: Urgent Attention Needed
Final Thought
If you’re building or scaling a product team, don’t stop at “what features should we build?”
Ask:
- Do we have a system that lets us build at scale?
- Can our design, engineering, and support systems grow together?
- Are we investing in logistics with the same seriousness as in features?
Because in the long game of product development, Tactics may win battles. But logistics win the war.