Triage – address the immediate problem, stabilize, stop the bleeding, redirect, and move on. Full Serve – someone does it for you, all of it, end to end, your job is to ask for it and it is done. Who you start with, is who you end with. Self-serve – you do it yourself, end to end, you’re on your own. If you have a problem, you don’t ask for help, you use the tools…
There are exceptions to any rule. The goal is to ensure that exceptions don’t become the norm. Because if they do, there is no point in having the rule. And if you don’t have the rule, then the norm is what you tried to stop. Unless of course the rule doesn’t apply anymore, in which case you don’t need to wait for the exceptions to occur. You can just tear it down in advance.
Yeah, yeah, I know – there is always a team that wins. But when you lose… Did you get smarter? Did you get better? Did you get stronger? Did you learn what works and what doesn’t? Did you figure out what you would change for next time? Did you build a team? Did that team survive? You can lose and come out better for it.
You don’t need everything, everywhere all at once. You don’t need to go full waterfall. You do need to know what you’re building. Why you’re building it. And who you’re building it for. If you’re not answering those 3 questions and keep trickling out the information as you receive, what you’ll end up with is a trickled-down app that kind of does what you want, for some of the people but they don’t know why…
You don’t pick your team. Your team picks their leader. And maybe that will be you, whether in title or not.