My critique about CRITIQUE Sessions

" If you ever want to be less sure of yourself, less confident in the outcome, just ask someone else what they think. It works every time."
- Jason Fried, CEO @ Basecamp

This is my critique about a ritual used for many product teams called CRITIQUE Sessions.

Critique Sessions are the best way to delay value delivery, it makes professionals less confident, less accountable and more anxious.

This is not about just formal Critique Sessions, but also about any informal way of delaying your delivery by making changes based on people's opinions.

It's just opinions, not facts

In a Critique Session, we gather a bunch of people to throw a bunch of opinions over a work that it's already done. That work was the result of the investment of professionals' time who worked hard doing their best to make it.

Those opinions make a project take lots of steps back to be changed, only based on people's opinions. Even if those opinions were based on facts, they keep being just opinions.

Products shouldn't be managed, designed, or developed over opinions, but over users' behavior.

What our users do with our products will tell if it's good or not. It's nonsense to delay the delivery of a project by fixing it based on opinions. It's not broken, it's only opinions.

Constructive criticism is still criticism

Even the most not emotional professionals leave this kind of session with less confidence.

Every great professional, regardless of seniority, always delivers the best work possible with their current repertoire, resources, and time available.

A Critique Session can be a good way to learn and get more repertoire. But going live to face the market and users it's the best school a product professional can have. The users' behavior will teach you what really matters to improve your work and outcomes.

Accountability is not sharable

Critique Sessions reduce the professional sense of accountability. It's a way to try to share the responsibility of your work with a bunch of people who aren´t truly accountable for that work, and shouldn't be.

If the outcome of the work is great, it'll become a great success case for that professional portfolio. But if the outcome sucks, it was not her/his fault, because everyone had the chance to prevent the failure, so everyone was an accomplice.

Critique Sessions create tension and anxiety in the whole team

Asking for opinions creates a feeling of personal due between professionals.

The professionals criticized feel obligated to change their work.

On the other side professional feel their opinion needs to be applied. Those who are not, feel that they are not listened to by the team and that their opinions don't count.

Don't stop the growth loop

Stop wasting time, do our best work, push it live, get data, learn, improve, repeat.

When I build product teams, we ban that kind of a waste of time.

We trust that everyone will deliver their best work with the time and resources currently available.

Everyone in the team knows that our best work today is our worst work from now on. Because we are continuously learning and improving.

Each professional is accountable for their delivery, results, learnings and improvements.

The only certainty I and my teams have is that tomorrow we'll be smarter than today, as today we are smarter than yesterday.

Continuous progress is the key to growth. Not perfectionism.

Work smart. Keep growing 🚀

This essay was inspired by:

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