Dogfooding (slang)

Definitions

1. Informal variant: 'We're eating our own dogfood this quarter.' Means using your own product internally. If it's good enough to sell, you'd better be willing to use it yourself.

   In plain English: Another way of saying a company uses its own product day-to-day, based on the idea that if your dog food is good enough, you should be willing to eat it yourself.

2. The phrase emphasizes the unpleasantness — dog food isn't gourmet cuisine, and using your own pre-release software isn't always pleasant either. That's the point: if it's painful for your team, it'll be painful for users.

   Example: 'Eating our own dogfood on the new CRM revealed that the search is painfully slow with more than 1,000 contacts. Good thing we found out before customers did.'

   Source: emphasis on discomfort

Related Terms

• Dogfooding
• Ship It
• Dogfood
• Sad Path
• State Explosion