Tag: Product Management

There are no perfect solutions, there are always trade-offs.
Expecting perfect solutions – checking all the boxes – is a common mistake projects and their sponsors make. One cannot have it all and have to give up on some of the requested features and functions.

Solutions to complex problems always involve trade-offs. There lies the challenge – among the different, less-than-perfect options, which one gives the most and compromises the least?

If you like this topic, you might be interested in listening to the episode – The short list – from Seth Godin’s podcast – Akimbo.

Some work is not meant to be done quickly and not meant to be done by a specific date either.

It is not unreasonable to expect output and results in time to be able to progress, but slow work needs time.

Pin a deadline on or timebox an activity and be prepared to make trade offs.

Trade offs could mean less than ideal.
Perhaps “less than ideal” is what’s needed for the work to be done.

Also…

'When will it be done' is an unanswerable question. However, 'what’s the probability of satisfying our strategic goals by this date at this cost' is both answerable and a reasonable ask as long as specific details of 'how' aren’t fixed.

— Allen Holub @allenholub.bsky.social (@allenholub) September 8, 2021

For an even longer (much longer) read, check out Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake from Gandalf Hudlow on iiSM.org