I’ve seen too many posts over the years that seem to paint ‘the business’ as the enemy of ‘the team’ and this is wrong to me on so many levels, we should all be working together..

Now there are situations where working conditions can only be described as toxic and relations are sour. I’m glad to say that these companies are few in number though.

The two biggest complaints seems to be that

• ‘They keep asking us for estimates and micromanaging’
• ‘They keep asking us to build features, why? They don’t understand value like we do’

I think I’ve covered the estimates point in a previous post so lets focus on the value point

Why are ‘the business’ so adamant that they know what the customer wants?

Well, at some point the company founder(s) realised that there was a problem that customers needed them to solve. They created a service to solve the problem and grew the business, to the point that they are able to fund an in house delivery/development team.

If you think about it this way, they may know a bit about what the customer wants. Admittedly as the company grew they may not have interacted with customers as much as they did originally, but they will most probably feel put out if they are told to step back and ‘leave it to the experts’, I think anyone would in this situation.

Work together with the business and use facts and research to understand what is valuable to a customer. Work as one team, not two separate warring factions.

Admittedly it takes two to tango, so if ‘the business’ is just dictating and not responding to data or metrics then you may well have reason to complain.

If you need some help to bring ‘the business’ and ‘the team’ together, get in touch