Something really useful a bunch of coworkers taught me over the last few years is how to stop asking for and giving milquetoast feedback.

Especially in surveys, people will respond to a lot of areas they don’t have strong feelings about with “it’s okay.”

Asking someone if a feature is “too X” or “too Y” on a scale of 1-5 results in a lot of default 3s.

By swapping that 1-5 scale to a 1-4 scale we can force them to think about it. There’s no middle ground. Is it closer to X or Y?

When giving feedback we also perpetuate a lot of status quo with silence. Sometimes silence can mean “this thing is lackluster doesn’t make me feel anything” other times it can mean “this thing is great, no notes.”

Just taking a firmer stance clears it up. “I think this feature is doing what it needs to do and we should stop iterating on it.” Or “If we cut this I’m not sure anyone would miss it.”

Picking a side and taking a stand when giving feedback propels us towards action, which is the whole reason we asked for feedback in the first place.

But asking people to continue to give critical feedback is not an excuse to iterate forever.

It’s unlikely that pushing people for feedback is going to result in an unambiguous “you did it!you’re done!”

It’s up to the IC and the leads to take that critical response and prioritize when something is ready to go.

But if people have taken a side in feedback, at least we’re shipping something with known opinions and suspected pain points.

Now when it comes out we can also gauge how accurate the team is in predicting a feature’s reception and understand our internal blind spots.