Yana Welinder looks at different areas where PMs need to make sure we don’t let process get in the way of good product sense in her post Product Over Process. On the importance of making sure specs aren’t “set in stone”:

Focusing on product over process during the execution stage means constantly evaluating whether the product does what it’s intended to do. This requires PMs to see the product through the users’ eyes and, more importantly, to figure out ways to do user testing even when it’s hard. It also means that the build process needs to be iterative. If you discover that the product doesn’t have the impact you’d expected, you should change it before it reaches the users — even if that means delaying launch.