A Version Is a Promise, Not a Folder
Explain versioning as a compatibility promise that product managers must govern deliberately.
Treat versioning as contract governance A version is useful only when it communicates the risk of adoption. SemVer makes that explicit: major for incompatible changes, minor for backward-compatible additions, patch for backward-compatible fixes. That sounds technical, but it is really product management. You are deciding how much migration work to impose on customers, how much support debt to carry, and how much trust to build or burn with every release. Stripe's published approach is a strong operating model: major releases can include breaking changes, while monthly releases stay backward-compatible. That pattern reduces surprise. It also gives internal teams a discipline:…
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