Thread by @lissijean

I want to talk about something I keep hearing from many places when I ask teams about their processes:

"We are different"

#agile #prodmgmt /1

Whenever I coach someone or start consulting with a company, I start off with an assessment where I try to learn about the individual products and how they are run. /2

During these sessions I usually ask about how people think of strategy, do prioritization, structure their teams, and communicate. Lots of other stuff too. /3

Whenever I ask these questions, 9/10 times I get this answer:

"Well, we're different."

"Different, how?" I ask.

/4

I get a variety of answers:

"Our products are in maintenance mode"
"We are internal products"
"We are B2B not consumer"

List goes on. All valid differences.

But different from what? /5

So I dive deeper.

Almost every time "we're different" is an excuse for someone not wanting to do something.

Not that they've tried, but that they've already decided they won't and can't. /6

"Oh we can't do so Continuous delivery, we have internal customers."

"Oh we don't need user research, we are internal tools."

"Oh we can't run experiments, we are enterprise software"

In every case it's not "can't", it's "won't". /7

And any difference from the perceived normal of consumer products with a UI is the justification. /8

I have worked with teams in banks, healthcare, consumer products, tech products, and hardware.

Successful teams never say "I can't because we're different."

They say "we're different, so how can we adapt this to fit us?"

/9

If you write everything off at the start because the situation is not perfectly tailored to yours, how will you ever learn?

How do you ever get better? /10

I'm going to give you a challenge.

If you're balking at something because it doesn't sound like your own context, try to get to the root of the principles in the story.

What can you try? What could you adapt to? Can it help?

Don't dismiss everything outright. /end