1926
Fisher publishes The Arrangement of Field Experiments
The paper set out rational principles for field experiments, including randomization and valid estimation of error. These principles became foundations for later controlled comparisons.
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Product and design
Product Manager timeline
How the field of a Product Manager got here: the sourced milestones from every published course of this career, on one axis.
1926 to 2025
83 milestones across 9 courses
- Core
- Supporting
- Specialization
The axis stretches toward recent years, where most milestones fall. Bars count milestones per year; dots are single milestones.
Before 1990
18 milestones
1935
Fisher publishes The Design of Experiments
Fisher's book presented experimental procedure and significance testing together. It became a reference point for randomization, replication, and planned inference.
1946 Jun
Plackett and Burman publish multifactorial designs
The paper described optimum multifactorial designs for studying many component changes against a measured characteristic. It provided a compact screening approach when a full factorial is too large.
1948 Oct 30
The MRC streptomycin trial is published
The British Medical Journal published a controlled tuberculosis trial with concealed random allocation. The design demonstrated randomized comparison in a high-stakes medical setting.
1950 Nov
Joel Dean publishes "Pricing Policies for New Products"
The Harvard Business Review article treats pricing as a function of a new product's competitive evolution over time, an early articulation of managing a product across its economic life.
1951 Jan
Box and Wilson publish response-surface methodology
Box and Wilson described sequential experiments for finding settings that optimize a quantitative response. The method made experimentation an iterative route toward operating conditions rather than a single comparison.
1954
Management by Objectives enters management practice
Peter Drucker's Management by Objectives established a results-oriented precursor that later influenced Andy Grove's approach at Intel.
1965 Nov
Theodore Levitt publishes "Exploit the Product Life Cycle"
Levitt's Harvard Business Review article names the life cycle a managerial instrument of competitive power and pushes executives to use stage-aware strategy instead of treating the concept as unused professional baggage.
1968 Oct
NATO software engineering conference
The Garmisch conference framed software development as an engineering problem and discussed specifications, documentation, and evaluation against requirements. It established a context for treating requirements as an engineering concern rather than an informal pre-coding activity.
1970 Jan
Bruce Henderson publishes "The Product Portfolio"
The Boston Consulting Group perspective classifies products by market share and growth, gives the world cash cows and dogs, and argues that low-share low-growth products should be exited to cut losses, making retirement a portfolio decision.
1979 Nov
Intel begins Operation Crush
Intel used a company-wide objective and measurable design-win results to coordinate its response to microprocessor competition without changing the product itself.
1980 Apr
Taguchi publishes the loss function for quality variation
Taguchi related deviation from a target to loss rather than treating every in-specification result as equally good. This sharpened the practical focus on reducing variation in designed processes.
1983
The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction published
Card, Moran, and Newell described a cognitive framework for studying people using interactive systems. It helped establish human performance as an engineering concern in interface design.
1984
IEEE 830 software requirements specification standard
IEEE 830 established a standard reference for software requirements specifications. It made the structure and quality of a specification an explicit, reviewable engineering artifact.
1984 Mar
Protocol Analysis published
Ericsson and Simon published a method for treating verbal reports as data. Think-aloud practice in usability sessions draws on this methodological foundation.
1986
System Usability Scale introduced
John Brooke created the ten-item System Usability Scale. It gave teams a compact post-test measure for comparing perceived system usability.
1986 Jan
The New New Product Development Game published
Takeuchi and Nonaka described a holistic, overlapping product development approach using a rugby metaphor. The article became one of the influences cited in Scrum's later history.
1987
Motorola publishes its process
Willyard and McClees published the first journal paper on technology roadmapping, making Motorola's product-technology approach visible beyond the company.
1990s
15 milestones
1991
Semiconductor industry holds a broad roadmap workshop
A United States workshop brought industry, universities, government agencies, consortia, and laboratories together to chart semiconductor technology needs.
1992
First sector-level semiconductor roadmap is produced
Industry coordination produced a public sector-level roadmap that established shared technology targets beyond one company.
1993
Problem-discovery model published
Nielsen and Landauer published a mathematical model for the number of usability problems found as participants are added. The model informed small iterative qualitative-study practice.
1993
Scrum developed at Easel Corporation
Jeff Sutherland and colleagues developed Scrum at Easel Corporation. This established an empirical team framework before the Agile Manifesto supplied a broader name for related approaches.
1993 Jan
First IEEE requirements engineering symposium
IEEE held the first International Symposium on Requirements Engineering in San Diego. The event gave requirements engineering a dedicated international research forum.
1994 Apr
First IEEE requirements engineering conference
The first International Conference on Requirements Engineering met in Colorado Springs. The conference series complemented the symposium with a second venue focused on the discipline.
1995
Scrum is co-presented at OOPSLA
Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland co-presented Scrum at OOPSLA, making an early formal definition public.
1995
Scrum presented at OOPSLA
Ken Schwaber presented Scrum publicly at the OOPSLA conference in Austin. The framework entered wider software-development discussion before the Agile Manifesto.
1997
EIRMA publishes generalized roadmapping guidance
EIRMA documented a multilayer framework spanning external influences, deliverables, technologies, know-how, and resources, with time as the defining parameter.
1997
NIST starts the Industry Usability Reporting project
NIST began work with suppliers and purchasers on a common format for sharing usability test results. The effort shifted attention from isolated findings to interpretable reports.
1997
Philips formalizes market-pull and technology-push interaction
Philips published a product-technology structure that considered markets, products, and technologies together over time.
1998
ISO 9241-11 defines usability in context
ISO 9241-11 framed usability through effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction for specified users, goals, and contexts. This made context of use part of the evaluation model.
1998 Apr
Third IEEE requirements engineering conference
ICRE 1998 continued the alternating conference and symposium series. The recurring events strengthened a shared research and practice community around elicitation, specification, and validation.
1999
Google adopts OKRs
John Doerr introduced OKRs to Google's founders, extending the method from Intel into a growing software company.
1999
International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors begins
Five regional trade organizations cooperated on the first international semiconductor roadmap and a recurring global planning process.
2000s
12 milestones
2001
Agile Manifesto is published
The Agile Manifesto stated principles for iterative software work, including regular reflection and adjustment. Scrum later became widely used within this broader agile context.
2001
Cambridge publishes the T-Plan workbook
T-Plan packaged a fast-start workshop method for linking market, product, and technology views into a first roadmap.
2001 Feb
Manifesto for Agile Software Development published
The manifesto formalized an adaptive software-development movement that valued responding to change, shaping the environment in which living roadmaps replaced fixed long-range plans.
2001 Feb
Manifesto for Agile Software Development signed
Seventeen practitioners met at Snowbird and published the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. It expressed common value preferences across several existing lightweight approaches.
2001 Dec
Common Industry Format becomes an ANSI standard
ANSI approved the Common Industry Format for usability test reports. It specified how results could be reported for professional interpretation and comparison.
2002 Aug
Conference and symposium merge into annual RE
The separate IEEE conference and symposium series merged into the annual International Requirements Engineering Conference. The merged series became a continuing venue for the field.
2002 Oct 15
Microsoft's first software support lifecycle policy takes effect
Microsoft's Business, Developer, and Desktop Operating System Software Policy went into effect on October 15, 2002, giving enterprise customers published, predictable support timelines for commercial software.
2004
Motorola describes enterprise roadmap management
Motorola reported work toward a common process, software solution, and information architecture for roadmapping across the enterprise.
2005
ISO/IEC 25062 standardizes usability test reports
ISO/IEC 25062 published an international Common Industry Format for usability test reports. It extended a shared reporting structure beyond the earlier national standard.
2006 Mar
Microsoft forms the Experimentation Platform team
Microsoft formed ExP as an incubation project for controlled experiments across online properties. Experimentation began moving from isolated analyses toward a shared service.
2007
Google publishes a controlled-experiment case study for advertisers
Google's case study used a statistically designed experiment to assess new advertising features. It documented controlled experimentation as a product-development evaluation method at online scale.
2008 Jul 30
Controlled experiments on the web survey is published online
The survey organized web experimentation terminology, architecture, statistical analysis, and practical pitfalls into a common reference. Its 2009 journal issue connected industrial practice with experimental design.
2010s
27 milestones
2010
First Scrum Guide is written
The Scrum Guide's authors wrote its first version to provide a shared definition of Scrum for readers worldwide.
2010
First Scrum Guide published
Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland published the first official Scrum Guide. A concise public reference made the framework's accountabilities, events, artifacts, and rules easier to distinguish from local custom.
2010
ISO 9241-210 updates human-centred design guidance
ISO 9241-210 revised ISO 13407 and described human-centred design principles and activities across an interactive system's life cycle. Usability testing became one activity within a broader design process.
2010
NASA starts a fourteen-area roadmap effort
NASA identified fourteen space technology areas, technical challenges, and relevant missions as the basis for agency roadmaps.
2010 Jul
Google publishes overlapping experiment infrastructure
Google described infrastructure that allowed many concurrent experiments while separating parameter namespaces. The paper treated tooling and education as parts of experimentation at scale.
2011
ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148 first edition
ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148 consolidated requirements-engineering guidance for systems and software life cycles. It connected requirements work to the lifecycle process standards it supports.
2011
Scrum Guide receives an early revision
The official revision history records changes between the 2011 and 2013 Guides, establishing a maintained public reference.
2012
Now-Next-Later roadmap created
Janna Bastow and Simon Cast created the format to organize product direction by confidence horizons instead of fixed feature dates.
2012 Apr
NASA releases final roadmaps and breakdown structures
NASA published the completed roadmaps and related Technology Area Breakdown Structures for its space technology areas.
2013
Artifact transparency is added
The 2013 revision added an Artifact Transparency section, reinforcing that inspection depends on a trustworthy view of work.
2013 Feb
CUPED variance reduction is introduced
Researchers described using pre-experiment data to reduce metric variance in online controlled experiments. The method improved sensitivity without replacing randomized assignment.
2013 Mar 13
Google Reader shutdown announced
Google announced the retirement of Google Reader on a four-month clock, ending the product on July 1, 2013. The shutdown became the canonical example of a consumer sunset that damaged the vendor's reputation for product commitment far beyond the product's own user base.
2014 Apr 8
Windows XP reaches end of support
After over twelve years of availability and a defined support window, Windows XP left extended support. Large deployments, including a majority of sampled NHS trusts, were still running it at the deadline, and the UK government paid for a one-year extended support bridge, showing how support deadlines transfer risk to slow migrators.
2015
Evidence-Based Management released
Scrum.org released Evidence-Based Management as a framework for measuring and improving value delivery under uncertainty.
2015
NASA expands and standardizes its roadmaps
NASA revised the roadmap scope and applied greater standardization after internal and external review.
2016
Scrum Values are added
The 2016 revision added commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect as the values supporting transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
2016 Aug
Microsoft introduces the Modern Lifecycle Policy
The Modern Lifecycle Policy formalized support for continuously serviced cloud products, committing to a minimum of 12 months notice before ending support with no successor and a minimum of 30 days notice for changes requiring customer action.
2016 Aug
Opportunity Solution Tree published
Teresa Torres published the tree as a visual connection from a desired outcome through opportunities and solutions to experiments.
2017
Uses of Scrum are expanded in the Guide
The 2017 revision described Scrum's use beyond software development, including work on products, operations, and complex domains.
2017 Aug
Microsoft documents metric-interpretation pitfalls
Microsoft's paper collected twelve recurring mistakes in interpreting online controlled-experiment metrics. It shifted attention from running a test to checking whether the chosen metrics support a trustworthy decision.
2017 Aug
The Dirty Dozen metric pitfalls are published
Microsoft researchers cataloged recurring interpretation errors observed across thousands of experiments. Metric validity and practical interpretation became explicit parts of trustworthy analysis.
2017 Nov
Scrum Guide revised
The 2017 revision continued the guide's update sequence after the 2011, 2013, and 2016 editions. It kept the framework as a maintained reference rather than a frozen set of ceremonies.
2018 Apr
Large-scale experimentation platform anatomy is documented
The architecture separated portal, execution, log processing, and analysis services. This made the end-to-end measurement path a platform design concern rather than only a statistical calculation.
2018 Nov
ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148 second edition
The second edition of ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148 replaced the 2011 edition. It specified requirements-engineering processes and information items for systems and software work.
2019 Jan
Study examines how practitioners produce findings
Reeves published an ethnographic study of usability testing in a design consultancy. It showed that findings emerge through collaborative observer work, not as automatic readings of a session.
2019 Jul
Microsoft publishes a sample-ratio-mismatch taxonomy
The paper organized causes of observed assignment counts differing from the configured ratio across assignment, execution, log processing, and analysis. It made sample-ratio mismatch a formal diagnostic before product decisions.
2019 Jul
SRM diagnosis receives a practitioner taxonomy
The KDD paper organized sample ratio mismatch causes across assignment, execution, logging, and analysis. SRM became a concrete validity gate with diagnostic rules.
2020s
11 milestones
2020
Evidence-Based Management guide updated
The 2020 revision continued the framework's evolution around goals, value, experimentation, and measures for work under uncertainty.
2020
NASA separates taxonomy from roadmaps
NASA adopted a technical-discipline taxonomy and decoupled its breakdown structure from the roadmaps, changing how technology information supported decisions.
2020 Nov
Current Scrum Guide is released
The November 2020 Guide clarified the Scrum Team as self-managing and retained the framework's focus on empirical adaptation.
2020 Nov
Scrum Guide 2020 released
The current official Scrum Guide was released in November 2020. It defines Scrum through the 2020 accountabilities, events, artifacts, and commitments used in this course.
2020 Dec
The Kanban Guide published
The December 2020 Kanban Guide defined a minimal reference for managing flow and improving delivery. It gave practitioners a shared baseline for the workflow and flow metrics discussed here.
2021 Jun 1
Google Cloud's deprecation policy wording settled
The current Google Cloud deprecation policy text, last modified June 1, 2021, points discontinuation commitments into the Terms of Service, at least 12 months notice before discontinuing a service or making a backward-incompatible change to a customer-facing API, excluding pre-general-availability offerings.
2022 Nov 28
GitHub ships dated versions for the REST API
GitHub announced calendar-based versioning for its REST API, committing that when a new version is released the previous version is supported for at least 24 more months, with an explicit enumeration of what counts as a breaking change.
2024 May
Evidence-Based Management clarifies measure types
The 2024 guide connected input, activity, output, outcome, and impact measures and clarified the experiment loop used to inspect progress.
2024 May
SEBoK adds a requirements management article
SEBoK version 2.10 added a dedicated Requirements Management article during its systems engineering and management updates. The change reflected requirements management as an explicit part of current systems-engineering guidance.
2024 Oct 1
Stripe announces its new API release process
Stripe moved to major releases that carry breaking changes on a fixed cadence, with monthly backward-compatible releases in between, so existing integrations keep working until the operator opts in to an upgrade.
2025 May
The Kanban Guide updated
The May 2025 guide continued the public Kanban reference as a living document. Its timing remains outside the most recent twelve months, preserving this tab as history rather than release news.