Hope Of Deliverance

You know the drill, don’t you? “Hi, here’s my product requirement. By yesterday, no validation, no iteration.”

Turn around, do not pass UX, and ask your Development team for their effort estimate. You’re unable to explain why this requirement makes sense for the product. T-shirt sizing, Large, three months.

— Can we make it in time for the grand opening in two months?

Further negotiations with the team, who were already driving blind in the first round of estimates. Now, they are cutting corners on an imaginary implementation plan that hasn’t even been validated yet. T-shirt sizing, remember?

If you wonder why the Business believe the estimates, believe me, they don’t. The Plan lives a life of its own. It eats dates for breakfast — customer value, not so much. You destine your Dev team to a life of Delivery. You are not a Product Manager; you are a Delivery Manager.

If you were a Product Manager, you’d have listened carefully to your stakeholder and made them aware of your Product Strategy, suggested alternatives, shown ongoing validation rounds — in other words, you’d have pulled your stakeholder into the Product Development flow.

Besides inevitably disappointing your stakeholder when the deadline makes that whooshing sound as it goes by, you relegate your Development team to a role of mindless implementers and your UX Designer to that of UI doodler.

Perhaps you are left with no choice as your organisation expects you to work this way. That’s legitimate; we all need to protect our financial security. However, do realise that you and your Product team are on a repeat collision course with reality.

Your outcomes will suck, your Developers will leave, and your UX Designer will start avoiding your messages. Not a place you want to be.

I’ve got one word for you: Discovery. I’ll find the time later to write more about this. Meanwhile, know there’s hope of deliverance.