Product development feeling hard? Try this expert tactic.

1. CEO / founder shares an idea

   ↓

2. Engineers start building

   ↓

3. Team meets regularly & tracks progress 

   ↓

4. CEO is surprised at final delivery

   • Wishes less time and money was spent building XYZ feature.

   • Trust is lost for future features.

   • There’s a tone of anxiety & tension that makes everyone feel crappy.
     

👉 This result is SO common, and yet totally preventable. We can be more strategic & save a ton of money with a couple process tweaks.

Here’s my approach as a fractional product leader:

1. Get leadership alignment on problem area to chase

   ↓

2. Pitch a project candidate to Engineering
    ↓

3. Engineering shares a delivery estimate 
    ↓

4. Decide if the project ROI is still worth it after hearing the estimate 

   ↓

5. If yes, Engineering chunks down work further and shares deliverables for smaller milestones.

   ↓

6. Discuss altering or removing requirements where ROI is out of whack

   ↓

7. Request time-boxed engineering research for requirements that are worth it when scope is small, but aren’t worth it if scope bloats. Create a plan for each potential outcome: “if we learn X, we will do Y”… This cues up purposeful potential pivots before development even begins.

   ↓

8. Build proactively. Constantly tact towards value, based on user response & the latest engineering intel, while moving on from low-value time sucks.

👉 Impact:
When I recently led a team with this approach, the CEO had a month’s heads up about a key potential pivot. This helped repair team trust and decrease anxiety. The feature launched on time, hitting the ROI projection that made the project attractive in the first place.