Learning From The Lizardmen Questions

About this episode

The episode discusses the importance of questioning assumptions in product development and features insights on lizard optimization and user experience challenges.

Are you answering questions instead of questioning assumptions? Because you might be missing your biggest product wins! In this episode, Squirrel and Jefrey discuss why the best response to a client or user question is sometimes mu - unasking the question entirely. Join us to hear about Gojko Adzic's "lizard optimization" (and what 4% of the population believing in lizardmen has to do with your software), how the photo-sharing site Flickr was created entirely by mistake, and our own recent user-interface nightmare trying to record this very podcast. Links - “Don’t Answer The Question First:” https://lalitm.com/post/dont-answer-the-first-question/ - Lizard Optimization: https://gojko.net/books/lizard-optimization/ - Lizardman’s Constant: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Lizardman%27s_Constant - CITCON:AI Helsinki: https://citconf.com/helsinki2026/ -------------------------------------------------- You'll find free videos and practice material, plus our book Agile Conversations, at agileconversations.com And we'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show: email us at info@agileconversations.com -------------------------------------------------- About Your…

People in this episode

Hosts: Douglas Squirrel, Jeffrey Fredrick

Topics covered

• questioning assumptions
• product development
• user experience
• lizard optimization
• communication in agile

Keywords

• lizardmen
• assumptions
• product wins
• user interface
• Flickr
• Gojko Adzic
• Agile

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Flickr, TIM Group, CITCON:AI

Books & works: Agile Conversations

More episodes of Troubleshooting Agile

• Why You Should Shift-Right Your Testing · June 4, 2026 · 20 min
• When shouldn’t you use AI? · May 27, 2026 · 19 min
• Greatest Hits: Teaching Agile Again and Again and Again · May 15, 2026 · 20 min
• Against Product Chatbots · May 6, 2026 · 16 min
• Greatest Hits: Why Can’t We Ship Today? · May 1, 2026 · 19 min
• Crocker’s Rules · April 22, 2026 · 18 min