Sprint 2: The Frontend Dev Demo’ed & The Designer Unmuted His Mic… Fight?

“Product development is messy, unpredictable, and full of surprises.” Remember that line from the intro blog of this series? Yeah… this sprint surprised me.

The Accidental Dev Moment

Who would’ve thought I’d end up deploying code I didn’t even write?

Dev: The GitHub account you guys use is an individual account, not an organization one. I don’t have access to deploy. You’ll have to do it yourself.

Me: Yoo! I’m the PM. I don’t even know how that works.😅 Is that something someone with a non-technical background can do?

Dev: [reacts with laughing emoji] Yeah, if you’re free now, we can hop on a quick call and do it together.

Me: Okay. Give me a sec.

I sent a Google Meet invite. Opened my laptop. Sat on the couch. Just like that, I was deploying production code I didn’t write.

And weirdly? I kind of liked it.
I’ve always suspected I might accidentally slip into coding one day. Not planning to, but still… maybe this was the sign. I said yes to something outside my lane and learned something new.
How did I feel about it? Let’s just say I was ready to take my dev’s job. 😂

The Designer unmuted his mic…

The real MVPs of this sprint? The frontend devs. Not because they outworked everyone but because they owned it.

They noticed some pages needed a consistent background color, so they just added it. They didn’t wait for instructions. They just made the experience better. That’s ownership. That’s the kind of culture we value: ownership.

A small tweak like adding background color to some pages made a big difference.
A developer I once worked with would have just done what I suggested or presented, not what actually needed to be done.

The frontend dev demoed and the designer unmuted his mic.
Now, you know how that usually goes.

Designer vs. Frontend Dev bouts:

Someone says, “This isn’t what I designed.”

The dev says, “Yeah, but it works.”

And boom, round one is done.

As is the case with every designer, he didn’t see certain elements of his design implemented and was clearly not happy about it. But he calmly pointed out the gaps. The front-end guys? They listened. No pushback, no ego. Just, “Got it. We’ll fix it.” Simple.  It was the fight that didn’t happen. 

And that, to me, is a sign of a great team. People who care more about getting it right than being right. Missionaries, not mercenaries.

That fight would’ve been fun to watch — but it didn’t happen. Maybe sprint 3? You never know. Let’s see.