Collaborative Product Design

[ Preface ]

This is the last book you’ll ever need only if something tragic happens to you in the next 24 hours.

This book probably isn’t for you. Your coworkers recognize brilliance. They follow your recommendations without any fuss, give you plenty of time to think about…whatever. You never rush to complete anything. You never start over or change direction, and your boss never changes their mind or asks for anything crazy.

I wish I had a gig like that.

I work on cross-functional teams where people from business, technology, and design mill about and barely speak the same language with less and less time to do more and more. It doesn’t matter how close we get because the direction always changes, and the deadline never moves.

Figure P-1

Some poor schlubs work across silos, or—even worse—on cross-functional teams where business, technology, and design have to work together

I wrote this book for poor schlubs who schlep ideas across silos to get things built with ridiculous deadlines (Figure P-1). This isn’t a process book. It’s a get things done book. For people who work on teams. Teams get things done when they work better together.

This book isn’t full of new things. It’s full of boring, old things. No new process to guarantee good results. No secrets to success. You don’t need new. Don’t change what you do. Change how you do it. This book collects tools ...