The Work
March 19, 2022
When disciplines in software development are so segregated, those outside a discipline may think only of the final result. Developers type final production code, visual designers draw perfectly proportioned final line-art, product owners intuit the perfect feature.
The reality is that the majority of our time is spent before we simply type or draw our final result. When we don’t see that part of each other’s work, we lose understanding and empathy, and potential insights.
The disciplines needed to ship your product are in a dance together, and with the customer, until the product finds success.
Assume that they all need the same space. They all make mistakes. They all learn. They never stop designing.
And now the question of “what do developers do in the sprint while product designers do customer research” starts to become clear. They participate, they learn, they contribute. Then they can make more appropriate decisions around code structure.
The least useful thing your developers do for you is type code. The least useful thing you can do to support them, is expect them to type perfect code the first time.