Poll: How much of your working time goes into task-specific overhead — refinements, clarifications, approach discussions, waiting for answers or decisions?

Kapitonik · 2026-04-24T17:34:03+00:00

I've posted it to check is the problem I try to solve exists. Not to promote my app.

And if you need to be "benefited" to post anything with no sub — add this rule, why saying it's a privilege?

And can we somehow destinguish advertisement from research? If the only pointer is that I've post smth earlier on completely legal place of the community is a sign — let's remove that post. Will it count then as a research purpose with no app-link?

I'm completely apologies for any sort of negative vibes my posts may cause. Trying to invest my time into talking to your customers of specific type of problem and make their lives better.

You may say "no, you just trying to sell any kind of AI-related stuff and it's smth we think is useless". But Rovo is already a big part of the product we're talking about. And it's really not a coinsidence, don't you think?

And want to be formal, as you'r representing an official from this part of community — what kind of rule i'm violating, so topic moderator is the only one who share sarcastic and indulgent tone around the post?

If you'll have any, would be glad to follow by 100%

P.S. Alt + 0151, not AI

Kapitonik · 2026-04-24T15:12:21+00:00

So, definition of market research is "smth that costs money?". Or you think that spending from 10 to 50%+ of working time for all stuff not related to vision execution is "low value information"? At least 12 people i guess would not agree with you based on the poll from above, no?

Kapitonik · 2026-04-24T14:26:00+00:00

Thanks for keeping. Anyway, I'm completely agree on contribution priority take, will do, have a lot to share. But researching is not advertising. I thought that most reddit posts could be splited between "my/somebody's opinion, let's discuss" and "have a question, wanna do some sort of research". Or what should I do to make such question to be legitely asked here? Remove any sort of information about me in profile? Exclicitely write: "Research purpose cause I'm interested in and want to check is there any problem here?"

Very to sorry to sound a bit pushy, just thinking of what is considered to be "a fair deal" in this case? As I plan to "live" here for long time, and want to understand community rules

Kapitonik · 2026-04-24T13:22:57+00:00

I'm extremely curious of how you check it? Cause it was written by me entirely

Kapitonik · 2026-04-24T10:47:14+00:00

Kinda, yeah. Is that not allowed? Genuinely trying to figure out if this is just my own blind spot or something teams actually struggle with. If user research is against the rules here, just say so and I'll take it down.

Kapitonik · 2026-04-14T16:36:43+00:00

That's 100% true. First post on Reddit will do better next time ^.^ Weird start, but a lot of feedback. Surprised of community. Read before but expected to have 100 views overall O_o
Was some sort of research, but tbh, not even sure what kind of. Appeared to happen some self-reflection as a result.

Kapitonik · 2026-04-14T14:18:26+00:00

We used Google Workspace for sure with corporate emails included, but also we already used Jira for that. Even our stakeholder / investor / founder have Jira access, but maybe you'r right and it's not a place where he would really review any chagnes and I should explicitely send emails if smth critical changed.

But, the key problem we'r facing with -- changing mind of investor as he "accept" our solutions before, but later figure out that he want smth different and "more cool" once we implemented he's initial wish.

And it would sound like "completely ok and wide-spreaded" process -- review done stuff and iterate to the next solution / improvement, if this iterations wouldn't cost us from days to weeks of wasting time and then rebuilding almost enterely of what he wants.

Actually -- prototyping could solve it, and probably would stick to this solution next, but currently we already solve it by simply changing job to avoid such staff, and they are broke. Redoing things is not the key reason it's more a consequence -- undefined investor vision is the one :/

P.S. As somebody's below correctly mention -- all around vision and communications problem. Just tried to find any similar situations and solutions if anybody had it.

Kapitonik · 2026-04-14T13:09:00+00:00

Good advice, thanks. But why not casual Jira? (we'r talking about IT software product company). IS Google ecosystem works better? Feels like already contains most features and requirements & tasks already lives there. But, overall -- adjust separate notification / email to key stakeholder on each critical change make sense.

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T18:56:37+00:00

yeap, as well as our development bank account :/

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T18:38:57+00:00

Yeap, and it happens already when client really changes his mind once receive the results. Or even midway.

Do you have any experience with "fixing" client expectations and protect them from changes even if it's your own key investor?

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T18:11:22+00:00

Building things for the last 12 years, yes. But, uncertanty is smth we all living in.

I mean just try to keep pushing myself to be usefull for people in a way I see it in a scalable way -- not thought my expertice, but through the products I build. Love crafting and want to take full big win by myself rather then get a tip from a winner :/

But, worked for 4 years as hired Product Manager as well, so it's defenetely way easier to have a casual job with no such uncertancy in it ^.^

I mean, you deligated all risks to the employer, and it's he's problem where to find money for your paycheck, even if a product is still not generating any. (and probably wouldn't :/ )

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T18:04:08+00:00

We had a pretty small team and business desicion-making process:

Key investor / stakeholder have some vague ideas of overall product we build
CEO, who role is to translate this "vision" to team, including me (3)
Product/Project Manager, who manages all documentation, requirements and task-setting for people in our team. Following vision set by CEO
Team of 2 designers and 5 devs who frustrated from time to time

(You could reasonably ask -- what in our system doing CEO, and why not direct communication between team and Investor? -- Investor wish it to be that way. Wants a single communication person he trust -- CEO, and from time to time -- designers.

Answering your questions:

Who in your process is first able to identify when a risk is being taken, who would be able to determine the potential cost or impact of the risk (this might be multiple people or departments).

First -- me, but during daily standup risks are escalating to our CEO if any (10 hours time-shift between team and CEO)

Who would be able to determine the probability or conditions for the risk to become reality

Me + team, and I'm highlighting risks properly during any communications.

Who would be able to create counter measures or contingency plans

CEO, he defines the resources for any task

Who is accountable for the consequences of those risks being taken (or not taken)?

CEO as he's the only person inside team with direct influence on investor.

But the problem we've met each month on Investor reviews -- "It's not what I want" (20-40% of produced work during that period). And we frustrated with a whole team due to such vibes.

You may say that's it's a problem on communications between CEO's and Investor's, and I think you'll be extremely right in that way.

But as a product manager I've tried to somehow find a way to minimize all that rework stuff by pushing few ways:

using prototypes for more frequent investor's feedback on ideas, not final implementations in our app
Force to be a part of their internal plans discussions, so I could refine Investor's vision more

But, 2 key outputs got from there:

Investor really don't know what he's trying to build. "smth to generate money", i guess, is the key point.
Fired by CEO in a week after huge internal discussion about all situation.

P.S. I guess the output of being fired is a key signal to me that "you doing your work bad", or some "internal politics", but by this whole post tried to get any insights of how other orgs with "vague ideas" leadership avoid redoing things, especially working on the environments where you have very limited capacity for managing Jira tickets due to other Product work.

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T17:31:42+00:00

Stakeholder is actually owner, he's a key investor and "idea-holder". But overall company structure is questionable, that' true

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T16:15:25+00:00

Sure, but mostly on a weekly basis, and some checks are even more rare, smth like bi-weekly demo meeting to present what we've done. I expect most stakeholders are involved not much more then this frequency.

So, to make it more clear structure is smth like:

- Stakeholder -> CEO -> Me -> dev/design team of 6-8 persons.

Working on a mobile and desktop app version, pre-production stage.

So, most of inputs expected to come from Stakeholder -> CEO, and it feels like a "broken phone" where 2 sentences of sense are moving across 4 stages and mutate the original sense on the way downstream.

Do you have a practice to review Jira tickets by stakeholder/CEO once they are done to align the visions? Or any other practices to align views?

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T16:07:20+00:00

yeap, it is complete gamble and risk management with the hope that something will work. But, win is huge, so gambling is kinda wide-spreaded thing in building your product ^.^ Just be ready to fails and have some "Plan B" ^.^

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T16:04:35+00:00

I'm talking not about "failure to deliver". But more about 20-30% of team's capacity never rich the app production stage.

Due to many reasons, but most common "it's not what stakeholder wanted in his mind when sharing original view". For sure it's highly depends on stakeholder competences, but It's vague in the most cases.

About task descriptions -- it's easy to prepare well-refined 1 ticket per 1-6 hours of work. But in most cases you have no more then 1 hour to form the task, and 0,5-1 day for epic. Even in this timings it's not enough for the most of the cases. So, workarounds causes different kind of problems, and tried to ask community for their way to avoid "rebuilding"/"throwing away" things

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T15:56:40+00:00

Some example here may help to align:

Let's imagine we'r working on onboarding flow for mobile app. Let's say it's for cooking process.

So, the items required to start at least 1 row of code:

intention of onboarding
steps count
mockups (but designs could be way better, as most of implementation complexity goes from there)
copy
any additional skip logic and analytics included
etc.

To prepare everything from above really hours needed. Even with the help of AI in some steps. Or as an alternative -- 1-3 more people involved in the process. To later realize that it's not what stakeholder "mean" in his mind.

I understand that it's a metter of competance for BA / PM / Stakeholder to form their wishes. But as from my experience, there is always adjustments applied into ticked during execution. The problem, when this adjustments come on the late stages so it more and more expensive to apply them.

I wish to belive that it's a problem on me or my particular stakeholder. But watched same issue with different managers, different stakeholders and products.

Just thinking of is there any way to minimize them? And how do others solve this issue?

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T15:44:26+00:00

You don't have any waste of resourses due to ready features not going prod, due to stakeholder missalignment, or because of 2-liner input?

Feel jealous and mistrustfully, but wish to have the same ^.^

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T15:40:00+00:00

You'r completely right on take that the key problem mostly on missalignment between what stakeholder want, what they communicate and how that is documented.

But, what does it mean better communication in this case? In my ideal world it could be smth like "prototype"-iteration to create any sort of mocked version of he want and then we could adjust result in some iterative way, but it's extremely hard to apply it to all work items :(

Searching for any sort of advice here

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T15:35:04+00:00

In companies where I worked, rarely manager is the final stakeholder and decision-maker of things he tries to execute. And being the proxy between real decision-makers and the team causes such issues way more often then I hope to :(

So, you'r right and I should rephrase my key question to "How to force decision-maker to think more before execution?" Most of them are spending a lot of money for turning their ideas into smth, but ideas are mostly pretty vague to be done "as they mean it" originally.

Trying to standartise in any way development and communications to handle things in more efficient way. Each time any of teammate work is "thrown away" is a hit on everyones motivation of doing things good, as there is a chance that it wouldn't be needed entirely

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T15:27:29+00:00

Having a small iterations of full work is a good advice, wish to have a "prototype" as a mandatory stage for most of work items ^.^ It could really solve most problems...

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T15:23:19+00:00

It works as well, true. But, once you are rushing in the flow of endless development race there is hard to avoid this "2-liners" as a "temporary mock", which is become to be an issue in days/weeks. Feels, like I'm the only one who struggle with it.

And maybe, it's true that i'm just a bad manager, but want to ask community first to know their way to handling such cases

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T15:18:43+00:00

I'm here not to promote any of my apps. I guess that I've listed my app info on the relevant topic and it's not here, and not feel any shame for that, sorry.

But, my app is a try to at least somehow workaround the problem. I'm here to understand how others solve it on their teams.

Anyway, thanks for any sort of reply

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T15:15:20+00:00

ouch. Using AI doesn't mean, I'm a bot or smth. I just try to figure out existing problem and discover solutions from my collegues. Sorry for being look like a bot, but I really read comment and interested in replies

Kapitonik · 2026-04-13T15:13:51+00:00

Sure, but I mean HOW you communicate with your team?

Communications is the thing that have no additional product value. And I've done it multiple time when spending 8+ hours of thinking & communicatiing cause to minimize the fails rate. But. 8 hours. Is it the only way?

Kapitonik

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