Principles
Ten years of shipping taught me decks convince nobody. A working prototype argues my case better than I ever could, so I build the real thing first and explain it second.
Cutting a feature takes more conviction than adding one, and the constraints behind it, time, headcount, scope, never hold still for long. What survives isn't just what mattered on day one, it's what still holds up.
Specs go stale the moment they're written. I've built this way for a decade: a rough, clickable version in week one beats a polished document in month three, every time.
Every product I've shipped had a narrative, and every person touching it needed to hear the same one. I retell it until engineering, sales, and leadership are solving the same problem.
I've never regretted a user conversation. I've regretted plenty of assumptions. This is the one step I don't skip, no matter how confident the room feels.