These past few months I've pivoted from Laravel Shift. This doesn't mean I'm no longer developing Shift. More that I'm taking a small break to shift my focus (pun intended) to a separate, but related product.

I'm doing so for a few reasons and thought sharing them might help others make similar decisions on their own products.

First, it's good not to have all your eggs in one basket. As much as Laravel is wildly popular, history of PHP frameworks tells us one day Laravel will no longer be the popular framework. While I hope that's years from now and maybe Shift could facilitate any transition, it's nonetheless a reason to put some effort into other products.

Second, it's good to take a step back from products. While Shift may have needed coddling early on, I don't want to continually breathe life into the product. So it's nice to see Shift has been running smoothly on its own these past few weeks. This has also given me some perspective and allowed me to realign my vision of Shift. For example, putting effort into the Shift Developer Platform instead of doing everything myself.

Finally, in 2016 I gave my "Getting Git" workshop at several conferences. Each time to a large audience with great feedback. At first, I believed conferences were just a microcosm. However, the most common support requests I receive for Shift were Git related. So while Meetups and conferences were a target rich audience, seeing the need in Shift's audience has validated a customer need pivot.

So, I decided to turn "Getting Git" into a comprehensive video series on Git. In my standard MVP fashion, it is now available in early access. I plan to release the remaining videos by the end of January and periodically add new videos to a sub-series I'm calling "Everyday Git".

Time will tell if this proves to be the right choice. However, even if not, the MVP approach and value add for Shift users alone would prevent it from being a total loss.

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