3 ms·

I think the author of this article thinks a design team is run as some sort of isolated dictatorship. In reality design teams balance stakeholder feedback, tec

• idlewords 7y ago
  That's the point the author makes in the article—that Ive's team did better work when it had tradeoffs imposed on it.
• mwfunk 7y ago
  That's how it works when different teams within a company have an ideal balance of power. When everything's correctly balanced, the right people make the right decisions, and help to correct each other's wrong decisions. I bet at most companies though, there isn't an ideal balance of power between teams, or between the different divisions of a company. I don't think that balance happens naturally. It might even become harder to maintain that balance, as a company becomes more successful. Supposedly Microsoft during the Ballmer years was known for political conflict between the Office and Windows divisions. Sometimes what would be good for one (putting Office on as many platforms as possible) might be bad for the other one (the Windows people might want Office on as few platforms as possible). Conflicts like that are inevitable, but resolving them can be a crap shoot. If there's a lack of executive leadership, or a political power imbalance between the groups, the wrong group can win sometimes.