MENTAL MODEL · M0782

Dogfooding

BusinessHigh supportProduct Management

Included

Version 1.0.0 · Updated 2026-07-30

CORE DEFINITION

Employees of a company must be required to use the products they develop. If Microsoft employees don't use Windows, they can't discover real bugs and pain points.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

- Empathy loop: break the isolation between "producer" and "consumer". The most demanding user should be yourself. If you don't want to use your own product, don't expect others to buy it.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

When developers are placed in the situation of real users, they directly experience the friction caused by their own code, and this personal pain drives fixes more effectively than any QA report. Forced use eliminates the psychological distance of "this is for others", internalizing quality responsibility as personal experience, thus forming the harshest and most realistic acceptance criteria.

MINIMUM ACTION

In progress 0/1

Practice this model in one real situation:

Write "employees must use our own products" into team norms, not as a voluntary suggestion. 2. Key chains are driven by real business scenarios, avoiding building a separate internal channel to mask problems. 3. Set up channels to collect internal usage pain points and publicly disclose improvement progress. 4. Senior leaders lead by example, establishing a culture of "if you wouldn't use it yourself, don't launch it".

Check to track your progress (stored locally)

Learning progress0%

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Source support: Explicit

link
en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_foodZH · Explicit
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