You can’t tell if it’s working if you don’t know what working is
Disproof
A quantified, time-bound and verifiable target, hopefully in some way remotely related to the company mission
Consequences
General product x operational chaos as expectations are mismatched, deadlines are nonexistent or misintepreted, and goodwill is destroyed
As a general rule of multi-team companies: if communication fails it does not self-restore
This tends to create feedback loops until the business grinds to a halt, gets outcompeted, and dies
Keep groping around in the dark long enough, you'll cut your hands and bleed out
Causes
Happens depressingly often when you disconnect product teams from the notions of users and value, and toss them random things to build
Not usually something that the product teams directly avoid, but are rather kept away from
Sometimes it can just be a skill issue
Approaches
This obviously propagates to the evaluation stage but should come early and be reviewed often
By construction you can’t actually know exactly what success looks like, but by defining what you think it is and carefully updating where you think it is as you gain data, you can error-correct yourself and keep moving towards it