Re:Asking developers to do QA is broken – why anyone should ...
by tpmx on Wednesday June 30, 2021 @06:43PM
(#27694376)
Having previously spent a decade in that role for a $1B company: I never got a veto right before stuff got sold to customers. I really, really wanted that in the beginning.
In the end what I ended up doing was spending a lot of time packaging the product as well as educating the sales force. If you don't have well-packaged products, the sales force will sell anything, even if it doesn't exist. And they'll get backed up by a typically slightly disconnected exec team, because they also want revenue really, really badly.
This strategy worked surprisingly well. I think both the sales team and the ever slightly disconnected exec team benefited from the artificial structure that I spent so much effort making up. I guess people instinctively just like following clear structures over chaos.
(This was 5-10 years ago, and not in Silicon Valley.)
That would require a skilled product management that is on equal footing with sales and has a veto right before stuff gets sold to customers. All too often however, the only thing that matters is customer wishes for new features, with no one taking care that the tugs the customers are pulling on don't rip the product apart.