Product Development is a Trust Fall

A couple weeks ago, Marty Cagan gave an outstanding talk at CraftConf on why products fail despite having great engineering teams. In it, he calls out many of the common mistakes made by teams, and I think there is an underlying theme: trust.

Product development is a trust fall. In order to be successful, a chain of trust must be established from the business all the way down to the engineers. If any point in that chain is compromised, the integrity of the product—and specifically its success—is put in jeopardy.

Engineers will innovate. Trust them. Engineers will discover requirements. Trust them. Engineers will identify risks. Trust them.

This trust must be symmetrical. The business must trust its product managers, who must trust the business. Product managers must trust the engineers, who must trust the product managers. Each level in this hierarchy must act as its own trust anchor. Trust is assumed, not derived. To say the opposite would imply your system of hiring and firing is fundamentally flawed. If you do not trust your teams, your teams will not trust you.

Engineers will prioritize. Trust them. Engineers will deliver. Trust them. Engineers will fail. Let them.

Product development is a trust fall. When you let go, your team will catch you. And when they don’t, they’ll pick you up, dust you off, and say, “we’ll make an adjustment.” Fail fast but recover faster. The more times you fall and hit the ground, the more adjustments we make. The quicker we repeat this process, the less time you spend on the ground. Shame on the teams that spend days, weeks, months planning their fall, ensuring everything is in place, only to find the ground has moved.

It’s inexcusable to say you fail fast when it’s really a slow, prolonged death in product, in technology, or in execution, yet it’s surprisingly common. In order to innovate, you have to fail first. In order to build an effective team, you have to fail first. In order to produce a successful product, you have to fail first. The number one fatal mistake teams make is not recognizing when they’ve failed or being too proud to admit it. This is what Agile is actually about. It’s not about roadmaps or requirements gathering or user stories or stand-ups. It’s about failing and adjusting, failing and adjusting, failing and adjusting. Agile is micro failure on a macro level. As Cagan remarks, the biggest visible distinguisher of a great team is no roadmap.

A roadmap is essentially dooming your team to get out a small number of things that will almost certainly—most of them—not work.

Developers need to be part of the ideation process from day one. The customer is usually wrong. They often don’t know what they want or what’s possible. Developers are invested in the technology and understand its capabilities and limitations. Trust them.

If you’re just using your developers to code, you’re only getting about half their value.

I’ve said it before but without a focused vision, a product will fail. Without embracing new ideas and technology, a company will become irrelevant. Developers must be closely involved with both aspects in order to be successful. Innovate, fail, adjust, deliver. Repeat.

Product development is a trust fall. The key is letting go.