A guide to dogfooding

Dogfooding is a product development strategy where a team uses its own product before releasing it to the market, enabling them to understand its value and functionality from a user's perspective. This approach is exemplified by a story of a Brazilian restaurant, where the chef and staff dined at their own establishment to identify and rectify the shortcomings of their menu, ultimately leading to a successful transformation. In the tech industry, dogfooding, as practiced by former Google Product Manager Itamar Gilad with Gmail's automatic email sorting feature, allows teams to firsthand experience and improve their products, ensuring they meet user needs effectively. While dogfooding provides valuable qualitative insights into product usability and functionality, it is not a replacement for other testing methods, such as smoke, regression, and sanity tests, which remain essential for maintaining high-quality standards. By integrating dogfooding with these complementary testing practices, product teams can better understand customer interactions and deliver valuable, user-centered products.