holman/feedback — Issue #123: How does "work on what you want" work for new products/stuff we need?
Author: seanhess
Created: 2012-01-27 18:53:35+00:00
State: open

Hi, new reader of your blog here. I'm Cofounder of a startup with about 5 engineers. I love the idea of letting developers work on what they are most interested in, but I don't know how to handle a few things.

First, what if we're working on a product that isn't well defined? Our CEO and designer spend a lot of time brainstorming, producing designs, then handing them off to a developer to try it out. Then a lot of time we'll scrap it, and try something else. How could we steer the developer into an experiment we consider useful? Or what am I missing?

Second, sometimes we have things like demos for potential partners, and they need to be done ASAP. What about bugs? You need developers to buy in to the idea of getting rid of bugs from your bug tracker or something, right?

Thanks. Again, I *really* want this to work, so I'd love to get some clarification.