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Product & Management Stage

Shift From Cycles of Failure to Quality and Value

September 17, 2025 4:00 PM
Long Lecture
🇬🇧 English
Bratysława 1

About

Companies sacrifice product, service, and experience quality to “just ship it” or be “fast.” Through cycles of opinions, guesses, and assumptions, we dress up as “hypotheses,” we slowly and inefficiently crawl towards something we claim is “good enough.” We celebrate repeated failures as “good product strategy” and “learning,” but we fail so often that we’re clearly not learning from failures.

We must use critical thinking, speak up, and help our teams shift toward cycles of success. We must help our teams refocus on how user-centricity (done well) will accomplish business goals. Great products and services that meet or exceed users’ needs are more likely to lead to increased conversions, revenue, and loyalty.

Let’s talk about how to have some of these tough conversations, especially when we’re experiencing frequent failures in our experiments, launches, and product-market fit.

Talk by

Photo of Debbie Levitt, CXO at Delta CX
Debbie Levitt
CXO at Delta CX

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From the recording

Talk in brief

In her WaysConf 2025 presentation, Debbie Levitt challenges the tech industry's normalization of high failure rates, urging organizations to shift from continuous cycles of guessing to a rigorous focus on quality and value. Levitt critiques popular product development frameworks, such as hypothesis-first design and minimally viable products (MVPs), arguing that they often serve as excuses for skipping foundational user research. By analyzing high failure rates in A/B testing at major tech firms and the true principles of Lean methodology, she demonstrates how poor quality ultimately costs companies more than upfront investments in research and design. To break these cycles of failure, Levitt advocates for a "value-led" approach where teams prioritize customer ROI, establish clear quality standards, and ask whether a feature should be built rather than simply if it can be built.

Key takeaways

  1. 01

    Rejecting the Normalization of Failure

    Modern product development has become too comfortable with 90% failure rates, treating them as an unavoidable cost of doing business. Instead of glorifying failing fast, organizations must focus on minimizing risk by understanding their users before building.

    Watch from 3:49
  2. 02

    The Flaw of Hypothesis-First Frameworks

    Starting with an idea or hypothesis and immediately running experiments bypasses the crucial first steps of the scientific method, which are research and observation. True innovation requires understanding the problem space deeply before attempting to design a solution.

    Watch from 15:22
  3. 03

    Redefining Lean as Waste Reduction

    Many teams incorrectly define "Lean" as doing the bare minimum or delivering subpar products that users must struggle to figure out. In reality, Lean methodology is about eliminating waste, not cutting out essential research and quality standards.

    Watch from 32:53
  4. 04

    Calculating the True Cost of Poor Quality

    While delivering high-quality products requires upfront investment, releasing poor-quality features incurs massive hidden costs from rebuilding, redesigning, and customer churn. Teams should document these risks in a register to show leadership the financial impact of rushed releases.

    Watch from 22:50
  5. 05

    Shifting from "Can We" to "Should We"

    Organizations frequently ask if they can build a feature or automate a process using tools like AI, rather than asking if they should. A value-led company evaluates whether an action will genuinely deliver a return on investment for the customer and the business.

    Watch from 35:19
Read edited transcript highlights

These concise notes were edited from automatic captions and checked against the talk structure. They are not a verbatim transcript.

The Illusion of Customer-Centricity in Modern PM

Many product managers claim that talking to customers is the ultimate secret to product success, yet many of these same professionals speak with users multiple times a week without ever shipping a winning product. This disconnect occurs because talking to customers is treated as a simple checklist item rather than a rigorous research process. True customer-centricity requires high-quality execution of research, synthesis, and design, which is frequently skipped in rushed development cycles.

Watch from 3:59

The Skateboard Fallacy of MVP Validation

The classic product development cartoon suggesting that you can validate a customer's need for a car by first building them a skateboard is fundamentally flawed. Giving a user a single wheel or a skateboard does not tell you if they will eventually want or need a two-door convertible. Delivering subpar, minimally viable products only results in unhappy customers and poor feedback, because users do not want the absolute least a company can possibly deliver.

Watch from 11:16

Reclaiming the True Scientific Method

Modern frameworks often promote a hypothesis-first approach where teams start with an idea, build an experiment, and then try to learn from it. This removes the actual science from the scientific method, which historically begins with observation and deep research into the problem space. Only after understanding the problem should a team form a question, establish a hypothesis, and design an experiment to test it, preventing the waste of building incorrect solutions.

Watch from 15:22

The Hidden Costs of Bad Quality

Organizations often hesitate to invest in quality because of upfront costs, but they ignore the massive financial drain caused by poor quality. When a company ships a broken or poorly designed feature to meet a deadline, they must eventually spend time and resources to redesign, rebuild, and fix it, all while suffering from customer dissatisfaction and support tickets. Documenting these risks in a formal register can help teams demonstrate the true cost of bad quality to leadership.

Watch from 22:50

Redefining Lean Methodology

The tech industry has distorted the definition of Lean to mean doing the absolute bare minimum to get to the next step. However, the actual definition of Lean methodology is centered on the elimination of waste, not the elimination of critical research, design, or quality standards. Shipping broken or unvetted features that users must struggle to figure out is not Lean; it is a highly wasteful process that forces teams to cycle backward.

Watch from 31:52

Prioritizing Customer ROI over "Can We"

Companies frequently get distracted by technological capabilities, asking if they can automate processes or replace specialists with AI, rather than asking if they should. Customers constantly evaluate the return on investment they get from a company's products and services. To deliver real value, organizations must shift their focus from technical feasibility to whether a decision will genuinely make things easier, faster, and more reliable for the end user.

Watch from 35:19
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