The fifth product risk: a practical guide to designing ethical products | by Luke Galliwade | Nov, 2024


How to empower and protect your customers by considering not just Value, Usability, Viability and Feasibility, but also the ethical impact of what we build and release to the world.

Most product teams will be familiar with the four big product risks, popularised by Marty Cagan’s landmark book Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love. Cagan outlines four big risks: Value, Usability, Feasibility, and Viability. Teams often use these risks or variations on them to prioritise, organise and weed out ideas from the roadmap and backlog.

But there is a fifth product risk that’s too often ignored:

Ethics — whether the impact of the product on people and the planet is a net good.

The five product risks. Value, Usability, Feasibility, Viability and Ethics.
The Five Product Risks

Now, product ethics is nothing new. But too often, it’s a side-of-desk activity. Or an afterthought. It’s very rarely baked into the processes and habits of product teams.

And that’s a problem. Software has a huge impact on people’s everyday lives, the planet and more. So why are all product teams not considering ethics a hygiene factor in creating…



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