How to Put an End to Never-Ending Product Debates
The Option 1, Option 2 Framework
When you’re building a new product, you constantly have to decide which features to build, when to build them and how to build them. However, when it comes to making these decisions, teams often fall into two failure modes — The Never-Ending Debate mode or The “Yes Team” mode. To make matters worse, remote work only exacerbates both failure modes.
Failure Mode 1: The Never-Ending Debate
First, you should be proud that your team has an open atmosphere where team members are comfortable sharing their opinions. However, you and your team will quickly find yourselves exhausted.
The endless debates are a drain on the team’s energy, and before you know it, the day is done. The backlog hasn’t gotten any smaller. To make matters worse, heated and lengthy debates are difficult to manage. With strong personalities, it’s very easy for discussions to turn into debates, and for debates to turn into arguments that get personal. In a remote work setting, this failure mode can be especially bad because you lack the in-person interaction that humanizes people.
