The team builds it

Why no one should own the product

It’s your team that builds software, plain and simple. As much as product managers are the ones responsible for prioritizing the backlog, once an idea hits the development pipeline (i.e. someone decides that a feature needs to be built now), it becomes the property of the team. That means that the team should feel 100% ownership over executing the feature to the best of their abilities. And the team is made up of individuals with differing skill sets and opinions, all of which should be respected.

That’s not to say that features must be built by consensus but it’s important that the team feels in control of what they are doing throughout the product development process. How can that possibly happen if they have no say or very little say in how features are built? It is this friction-filled team dynamic that makes building features such a challenging but ultimately rich process. It is through the struggle of working as a team made up of individuals with strong and differing opinions that true product value emerges.

It’s hard to say how this somewhat chaotic process turns ideas into useful and shippable features, but a team that builds together builds magic. Software would be a lot easier to ship if one person was responsible for crafting an idea that was then just coded without push back or argument from the executing developers. But that’s a world that no sane developer, designer or even product manager wants to live in. And I’m convinced that team conversation, collaboration, discussion, and iteration is what’s ultimately responsible for product greatness and beauty beyond anyone’s imagination.

No one has a monopoly on good ideas, no one is always right. It is only through the struggle of a team that quality software gets built. And that’s the software that users love. Always remember, the team builds it.