On Humility in Product Development

This is not about humility as a personal character quality

Humility is a useful character quality for many reasons, espoused by centuries of wisdom literature, spiritual practices, leaders, gurus. This is not about humility in a general sense. This is about the opportunity cost of your ego.

This is really about lean product development practices

But I’ve yet to hear or read a lean practitioner connect the practice to humility.

This is not about empathy

I have heard product design and develoment educators talk about the necessity of empathy. I have written about that before. Empathy is a great trait for product people to have and it will allow them to get things right more often than those without empathy.

No matter how smart and experienced you are or how clever and thought-out your idea is, it will not survive contact with real customers.
— Daniel Miller (@dealingwith) February 11, 2016

What's the opposite of Occam's razor?
— Daniel Miller (@dealingwith) February 24, 2016 —

This is about the opportunity cost of your ego

Everyone has ideas. Ideas about what feature to build, which user experience “hack” to employ, which pixel to push and in which direction, what color to make the icon.

The longer your idea takes to implement while not

a. based on data, or while not b. collecting data about itself

the more it is costing you in time you could be spending on an idea that is doing either.

It’s not really that “perfect is the enemy of good.” It’s that “your idea, executed perfectly, is the enemy of your product.”

And accepting that takes a whole lot of humility.¹