For those of us in product management, the drama unfolding in Congress with regard to the healthcare reform package is a too-familiar refrain. Without wading into the merits of the proposal on the table right now, we’ve watched a team set an initial objective to solve a specific problem (provide healthcare for the uninsured) which has morphed over the past year as deals are cut to obtain the approval of hardheaded stakeholders. As further bargaining takes place to get votes and get the solution through Congress, we have a solution coming up for a vote that both major constituent groups are disowning for different reasons.

Take all this within the context of working in different realities (some not acknowledging the problem really exists/defining it differently), with different value systems and beliefs about whether the current forum is even the right one to address the problem, and it’s no wonder that what comes out of such a process is often clumsy and–ultimately–a poor solution.  A guest blog on HBR illustrates this point with the “successful” Medicare Part D episode earlier this decade: a solution that many don’t even understand, much less support.

In product management, we advocate that there needs to be one “owner” of a problem space and solution, who makes the decisions about what form that solution takes and avoids feature creep.  Those decisions need to be made with a laser focus on the problem being solved and the market itself.  What we’re seeing in Congress–with all bills, really, but highlighted in prime time for us now–is the exact opposite: features added and features cut arbitrarily for the purpose of gaining stakeholder support, not because it makes the solution better. The goal of delivering something to market has taken precedence over actually solving the problem.

This is no way to build a quality product.