Leading product at a fast growing company (DataCamp) and being interested in history, I often find that the stories of World War 2 provide me with useful insights for my daily problems. Today, I wanted to focus on how the Western Allies’ better product management led to their victory.

At the outbreak of WW2, Nazi Germany seemed to have the winning hand: a rising empire, military victories at Blitzkrieg speed, superior weaponry, and Europe at its knees. Five years later, they had nothing. Germany was a crippled country with no resources left.

Shipping and Logistics Are Everything — How Germany’s Scope Creep and Inability to Scale Accelerated the Allied Victory

During World War 2 Nazi Germany propagandized the “Wunderwaffe” or “Miracle Weapon” that could tip the scales of war to the benefit of Germany.

Believing more advanced technology would yield a higher return on investment (a thesis that probably sounds familiar if you hang out in today’s start-up and scale-up scene), Germany started developing advanced weaponry, ranging from the first rocket powered airplane to aircraft carriers and nuclear bombs.

However, they did not ship. And in the occasions they did, it took a lot more time than expected.

Messerschmitt Me 163

The first rocket-propelled plane (the Messerschmitt Me 163) came out at a time that the Allies already had total dominance of the airspace, and the aircraft carriers and nuclear bombs never even made it “to production”. A similar fate was reserved for the Horten Ho 229, one of the first stealth bombers ever to be developed.

In product managerial lexicon, Nazi Germany had “Scope Creep”: projects that grow into infinite complexity, that undergo iteration over iteration, that eat up resources, to eventually die or launch too late at a time when your competitors have already divided the pie.

If, as a product manager, you don’t ship your product or product feature quickly enough, it does not matter. The other side will win.