Know What You're Improving

Toyota is known for continually improving their manufacturing processes. This article describes their philosophy and includes some illustrative examples.

One quote from the article stood out for me:

If you don't understand what you're trying to improve, how do you know that your suggestion is an improvement?

Your product manager shouldn't just tell developers what to build. Specifying features is of limited utility - and may even be counterproductive - if your team doesn't understand how those features benefit customers. The product manager should specify what to improve and the metrics by which your team can judge that a feature (and the implementation thereof) actually benefits customers.

Via Cote.

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