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> So, let's cave in to peer pressure or management dictates and continue down the wrong path (technically/socially)?

Seems like a very unfair restatement of what the author said. I would read that as "it's more important that everyone has a common understanding of what you are building than it is to spend time worrying about whether you have the exactly perfect goal."

Or to phrase it another way: if the understanding of the product isn't clear across the whole team, it doesn't matter if any one individual has a bunch of brilliant ideas for/about the product, because you aren't all working towards the same goal.




> I would read that as "it's more important that everyone has a common understanding of what you are building than it is to spend time worrying about whether you have the exactly perfect goal."

The fact is, that unless you have a functioning crystal ball, you don't actually know what the perfect goal is; you only have hazy guesses at best. At some point, extra time spent looking for the perfect goal is wasted, because one hazy guess is no better than the next. It's much better to get something that is well-structured and functioning out the door. If you've done your due diligence, it has as much chance of succeeding (or failing) as the next thing. And to get something well-structured and functional out the door, you need everyone to be working towards the same goal, even if they don't all necessarily agree that that's the perfect goal.

There's an argument that this is how ancient divination worked in practice. You don't know whether you should attack from the north, attack from the south, or hunker down and build defenses. You definitely can't do all three. It's much better to pick one and do it boldly than to dither around in indecision. Divination gets everyone fully behind one option; that option may not be the optimal one, but it's certainly better than "do nothing".

Which makes me wonder if maybe modern product management would be better with some oracle bones...


I'd offer that the "alignment" is substantially a function of the management/leadership on display.


Sure, but hopefully the choice isn't a binary one between "lack of alignment" versus "management/leadership dictates", since that would be evidence of a rather toxic team culture.


It's also a reflection (or assertion?) that software development largely is a team sport, not an individual one.


This is pretty much how I grokked the point.

Having a common vision is critical in team building and in actually building the right/correct/good thing.




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