How to avoid Design by Committee

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hi all,
as announced in my previous mail, here is my idea for reducing the likelihood 
of "Design by Committee".
One disclaimer up-front: I don't want to abolish Democracy. Democracy is an 
essential part of Free Software and it's not necessarily a bad thing. 
Everybody's voice should be heard.
*But*, democracy should not be confused with "Everybody tosses his opinion in, 
we mix it all up and get... something". This leads to things that nobody is 
happy with, as we've just experienced.
And here, my favorite author about product design, Marty Cagan, comes in. He 
is the author of "Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love" [1], a book 
which I passionately recommend to everybody who is involved in the creation if 
digital products in any way. And so far, everybody who read it liked it just 
as much as I do.
On his company blog, Marty wrote an article "Avoiding Design By Committee" 
[2]. Although I recommend everyone to read the article, here is the gist 
(already slightly adapted to our situation by me):
Product design should mainly be done in a small team consisting of:
 - The product manager (not sure if we can always have a specific person for 
that, but it would be great if we did imo)
 - A development lead
 - A user experience lead
Each member of the team must have the authority and competence to represent a 
complete perspective (PM for business and market, UX for the user, and Dev for 
the technology perspective). That way, all perspectives are represented right 
from the start. And if a specialist needs to be involved for a specific 
question, the corresponding core member can call him in for that question.
Then, when the core team has come up with a design, it has to be presented to 
the larger group of stakeholders which then have their say. 
The benefit here is that at this point, the core team should already have 
considered, discussed and found solutions to at least the more obvious issues. 
According to Marty, a good product has to be
- Useful
- Usable
- Feasible
And only if the core team thinks that all three criteria are met they present 
their design to the stakeholders.
When done exactly "by the book", one team would be responsible for a whole 
product. However, I don't think this works in a project like Plasma Active. 
That does not mean, though, that we can't have core teams design specific 
features. If a small team with a representative for each perspective does the 
initial design for a feature, they can discuss issues much more efficiently than 
if they are discussed by the whole PA team. And only if the core team missed 
an issue or could not find an elegant solution to it does it need to be 
discussed by all.

I wouldn't be surprised if this suggestion provokes negative initial reactions 
in many of you because it seems to contradict the values of Free Software, but 
I don't think it does. As I said, I don't mean to exclude anyone. Everybody 
should have a chance to voice his or her opinion. It's just that finding 
solutions to issues can be done much more efficiently upfront in a small group.

So let's hear what you guys think about it.

Thomas


[1] http://www.amazon.com/Inspired-Create-Products-Customers-
Love/dp/0981690408/
[2] http://www.svpg.com/avoiding-design-by-committee/