Does startup product development feel harder than it should? Try this expert tactic.

Startups without a strong product person often build like this:

CEO / founder shares an idea with Engineers
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Engineers start building the thing
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Team meets regularly & tracks progress 
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CEO is surprised at final delivery date and wishes less 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 end result is SO common, and yet totally preventable. We can be *way* more strategic & save a ton of money with just a couple process tweaks.

Here’s an approach I use all the time as a fractional product leader:

Pitch a project to Engineering
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Engineering shares a delivery estimate 
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Decide if the project ROI is still worth it after hearing the estimate 
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If yes, Engineering chunks down work further and shares scope for smaller milestones
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Discuss altering or removing requirements where ROI is out of whack
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Request time-boxed (important!) engineering research for requirements that are worth it when scope is small, but aren’t worth it if scope bloats. Share a plan for each potential outcome: “if we learn X, we will do Y”… This cues up purposeful potential pivots before development even begins.
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Build proactively. Constantly tact towards value, based on user response & the latest engineering intel, while moving on from low-value time sucks.

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, decrease anxiety, and launch the feature set on time, hitting the ROI projection that made the project attractive in the first place.