There is so much wisdom in Paul Adams’ Lessons learned from scaling a product team, but my favorite part is the clear articulation of accountability. All companies should have something like this:

• If the analysis of the problem to be solved is incorrect, it’s on the PM. Ensure appropriate research is done.

• If the design doesn’t address the problem, it’s on the Designer. Ensure you understand the research and problem.

• If the design solves the problem, but doesn’t fit with Intercom, deliver best practices, or is otherwise weak, it’s on the Designer. Ensure you understand our beliefs, patterns and principles.

• If engineering doesn’t deliver what was designed, or delivers it late, it’s on the Eng Lead. Ensure you understand the problem being solved and design, plan appropriately and accurately before writing code.

• If it goes out with too many bugs and broken use cases it’s on the PM. Ensure the team test realistic usage and edge cases.

• If the team is spending too much time on fixing bugs and not adding new value per our roadmap, it’s on the Eng Lead. Ensure each project improves overall code quality.

• If we don’t know how it performed, it’s on the PM. Ensure success criteria are defined and instrumented.

• If it doesn’t solve the problem, it’s on the PM. Ensure there is a plan to improve product changes that don’t fully solve the problem.

In other words, the buck mostly stops with Product Management…