I can hear it now.
It’s about strategy.
“If we have alignment on strategy, then there is no tension in the PD process.”
Sure, it helps.
But a strategy can only partially answer every trade-off choice and decision that has to be made as you move a product to market.
This gets back to tension.
If you don’t have tension in the process, then you likely are over-optimizing for one/some parts of the organization.
And by definition, likely underoptimizing for others.
This typically takes two forms:
Either one/some critical voices are not included in the process (or at the right time).
Or the culture is not open enough to allow for input/feedback during development.
Either way, it leads to a suboptimal product.
Which likely defeats the point of the whole exercise.