🔖 Why messiness is a good thing for product teams (archive) by Brian Donohue
Sometimes it feels like a waterfall process is what is required to build product, but in reality, it is a mythical place of calm and clarity. Creativity in inherently uncertain, and so it needs space to be uncertain.
More experience should mean that you know what you’re doing but, Ed Catmull, President at Pixar explains, “What we’re doing is inherently messy. The goal isn’t to prevent the mess, the goal is to ensure it doesn’t get too messy.”
The chaos of creativity can be tamed by working principles. Intercom has three:
- Think from first principles
- Ship to learn
- Think big, start small