Relay had a web app, a prototype on a phone and a founder who wanted the prototype to be real. I joined as the first product manager with nine people and a release train that did not exist yet.

The plan

One release a week, on both platforms, from the first month. No big launch; the app went into the store with three screens and grew from there.

What we shipped

• The courier flow: accept, pick up, deliver, with offline support
• Live tracking for customers, which cut «where is my order» tickets by 44 %
• Push notifications that people did not switch off, because there were only three
• The first experimentation program, which became its own project

The number

800K installs in eighteen months, and a crash rate under 0.3 %.

A weekly release is a habit, not a feature. The habit was the product.

What it taught me

Nine people can ship a lot if the week is protected. My job was mostly saying no to the eleventh thing.

How it ran

Two engineers per platform, one designer, one data analyst and me. Monday was planning, Thursday was the release, Friday was the reading. When a release slipped it slipped a week, never a month, because the next one was already on the calendar. The founder stopped asking for dates after the third month; the train was the date.