Cracks Beneath the Surface - follow up story

Breaking the cycle of product risks and deadlines

What happened after writing a recent Product Management IRL article? These insights are for premium subscribers to Product Management IRL.

This week’s backstory is about handling nagging product issues without slowing down:

Cracks Beneath the Surface in Your Product

What Prompted This Article?

I was staying silent on repeated quality compromises to avoid missing deadlines. I felt the compromises were low-risk because engineering could fix the “cracks beneath the surface” before any customer impact.

What changed me from being silent?

Two changes made me realize I had a product with complicated and interwoven issues:

1. I need to open a new partner sales channel - high risk of technical mistakes

2. Orders missing key components - lots of rework

Huge business risks that engineering can’t fix.

I was facing a big delimma - being silent doesn’t work and releases can’t be delayed.

I decided to experiment with a few new ideas:

Please keep reading to see how these experiments turned out!