Writing the brand before the product
We wrote down what OpenTrib believes before we designed a single page. It has settled more arguments than any spec we have written since.
Before we designed a page we wrote down what OpenTrib believes. Not a positioning statement for a deck. A document with sentences in it that could turn out to be wrong, and that we would have to either defend or change.
It felt like procrastination at the time. It has since settled more arguments than any specification we have written.
The mechanism is simple. Most product arguments are not really about the thing being argued. Two people disagreeing about whether to show a follower count are usually disagreeing about what the product is for, and they can trade opinions about the badge indefinitely without discovering that. A written belief moves the argument up a level, where it can actually be resolved.
It also works in the other direction, which we did not expect. Several times the document has lost. We wrote that the primary navigation should hold three destinations, then added a fourth for readers because readers are half the platform and had nowhere to go. The rule did not stop the change; it made us say out loud why we were making it, and record that we had.
The failure mode is writing beliefs so agreeable that nothing can contradict them. If the document cannot be cited against a proposal, it is decoration. Ours says that the catalogue is organised by intent rather than format, and that a page should not sell attention back to the people who list on it. Both have cost us something.