Compromise
Typically in a working day you'll have to make numerous compromises and trade-offs, so many that compromising becomes expected and even required. Trying to find a compromise is a respectful thing to do, when you compromise on something you also acknowledge that others have needs as well and those are important too. But just as important this is from both a fairness and respectfulness point of view it is also important to realize that everything is not equally important and all needs are not to be satisfied at the expense of others.
Most choices are actually not trade-offs between two persons, there is no mandatory rule to "meet in the middle", think hard and you might find an option better for all parties. There is sometimes the expectation that everybody should be able to get something, at least a small concession, this is problematic because teams and products have purposes. If the need is not aligned with the product there might be no reason at all to fulfill the need at all.
When not to compromise:
Beware when asked for a concession from somebody not in the target audience of the solution. The product purpose and target audience must come first if you compromise for the sake of someone (typically a stakeholder) then you are loosing the core of why you are delivering at all.
Avoid accepting short term band aids that require heavy investment to get away from. There is often many creative thoughts on how to deliver business value, you will rarely get time to fix something later. And if taken to far the product might be considered a meaningless or broken.
Avoid compromising on fundamental quality attributes for the sake of a single feature. That single feature might be very concrete and visible to the person asking for it, the fundamental attribute might be vague or not hurt much be a little concession. But qualities in fundamentals are typically very hard to regain, features come and go and new options ways implement them can always be found if the core product is valuable.
Don't compromise to create a product that is fairly good at many things. There are so many options available, to create delight you must have a product that is very good or even the best at something. "Great" is a reason for this product to exist rather than being replaced by something generic and cheap. If you find yourself making too many compromises you might consider if you haven't actually found an opportunity for another great product. It might be possible to create a variant at fraction of the resources needed to create the first product?
When not to compromise:
Beware when asked for a concession from somebody not in the target audience of the solution. The product purpose and target audience must come first if you compromise for the sake of someone (typically a stakeholder) then you are loosing the core of why you are delivering at all.
Avoid accepting short term band aids that require heavy investment to get away from. There is often many creative thoughts on how to deliver business value, you will rarely get time to fix something later. And if taken to far the product might be considered a meaningless or broken.
Avoid compromising on fundamental quality attributes for the sake of a single feature. That single feature might be very concrete and visible to the person asking for it, the fundamental attribute might be vague or not hurt much be a little concession. But qualities in fundamentals are typically very hard to regain, features come and go and new options ways implement them can always be found if the core product is valuable.
Don't compromise to create a product that is fairly good at many things. There are so many options available, to create delight you must have a product that is very good or even the best at something. "Great" is a reason for this product to exist rather than being replaced by something generic and cheap. If you find yourself making too many compromises you might consider if you haven't actually found an opportunity for another great product. It might be possible to create a variant at fraction of the resources needed to create the first product?
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