I know a guy that works at a company where the CEO will sell something to customers not knowing anything about the technical details, and then come back to the business and "make them do it".
I previously worked for a Dutch fintech company that operated in the same way, but from my understanding they were (probably still are) really quite effective, profits hugely increasing year-on-year.
But this Dutch company also makes use of some kinds of SWAT dev teams that help customers on the spot with issues, making sure the product lives up to the clients’ expectations, even if this means modifying a product delivered by the core dev teams. I.e.: if some feature was promised, but not yet part of the current release, the SWAT team might hack something quickly, often on the spot in the clients offices. Later on, such a hack might be replaced with a proper solution.
Isn’t this the norm? I complained that sales were “demoing new features” to customers before the back-end dev team had even heard of these features. I was basically told to stay in my lane. A property developer making design mockups of new highrises doesn’t run it past the bricklayers first, so why should product/sales talk to us digital bricklayers...
In one sense, great, I don’t want to bother about what a customer’s priorities are. But it turns out that only works if you TRUST the product team.
In my previous job in a consulting company one of the sales people mentioned how this is the first place where he has to sell the project twice: once for the customer, and one for the co-workers who'll work on it.
It was a nice company. Bosses had very limited direct power over the developers and designers, and rightfully so -- it's supposed to be a team of experts, after all.
