Comment by iliomadfear

At the risk of seening facile, the "just" the title resulted in my being hostile to the article. But, to try to be fair, I read it.

After completing the toughest gig of my professional life to date, "just build the product" as an instruction/conclusion feels both useful and flip.

In my head, I have an idea for a product. Sod all money in it. But as useful tool for something I care about, the "just build it" mentality fits.

However, in the roof-over-head world of making something useful for an enterprise customer "just build it" feels trite.

I went in to as a software consultant/developer to a fairly non IT literate organisation and was tasked to deliver to their specs. The big and costly challenge was to discover the product. To understand and challenge their specs, see the gaps, refine the UX and deliver. In my naivety, I thought the the customer would be receptive to this approach. Turns out they were - but only because I shouldered the cost of doing so. A massive learning experience for me. The customer got a product that exceeded their expectations - but, for a fixed price gig, commercially a failure for me.

I wouldn't change my willingness to jump in this time around, but I won't repeat it - and would now walk away early from a customer that thought they had the solution all figured out (as opposed to having the problem figured out). In this circumstance "Just build the product" feels trite and self-indulgent. Clarity on what to build is hard earned. And the opportunities that iterative development affords to a a software development organisation are a hard sell to one whose core expertise lies outside IT. Possibly a failure on my part, certainly room for improvement on my part.