Moving at the speed of trust
In fast-moving environments, traditional product management breaks down. Tickets rot, specs get ignored, and every new sprint feels like trying to document lightning in a bottle.
This was exactly what happened with my team. We were building at incredible speed — sometimes entire feature sets appeared overnight — but it also meant the usual structures for coordination stopped working.
The solution wasn’t more process or better tools. It was better rhythm.
What follows is what we learned about keeping a high-performance, distributed team focused, motivated, and creatively alive when the old playbooks stopped working.
When Old Methods Broke Down
Before we landed on what worked, we tried many “standard” approaches — the ones that look good on paper but collapse at high speed. For example, detailed user stories could become outdated in a day. Another problem was sizing tickets, sometimes they could be solved while we were in the meeting.
In vibe programming, things move incredibly fast. A single feature can go from idea to working code in a day. People build from instinct, vibe off each other’s work, and adjust constantly. But that speed breaks traditional product management models.
- Tickets went stale almost instantly.
- Anything older than three days was already inaccurate.
- Specs lagged behind living code.
- Process debt grew faster than the product.
The system moved faster than any written process could follow. Meetings, tickets, and specs created drag, not clarity.
That’s when I realized: We didn’t need more process. We needed tighter rhythm.
What Worked
Strangely enough: talking to each other in a structured way.
Daily standup became the heartbeat of the team. Each person shared:
- what they did
- what they’re doing
- what they’re blocked by
Ten minutes, tops.
With remote team members, sharing the task board on screen helped. If we drifted off topic, we parked it for later.
This simple ritual accomplished a lot:
- Everyone got to warm up and use their voice.
- Nobody wanted to be the person with “no progress” every day.
- We validated tickets in real time.
- Work that wasn’t tracked got called out.
It was accountability without micromanagement.
Parking Lot Phase
This is where the real work happened.
We kept a shared Google Doc that everyone could edit. Each day got its own heading, and during standup we’d jot down topics for the parking lot.
After standup, we’d go through the list together.
The doc became:
- a rolling journal of decisions
- a live space for corrections and details
- a shared memory of how ideas evolved
People often scrolled back days later to recall what we had decided.
It wasn’t perfect — but it was alive. And that made all the difference.
Attendance
The rule was simple:
Everyone attends standup. Parking lot is optional.
But almost everyone stayed anyway.
The parking lot was where real collaboration happened. If someone had to run an errand, they knew the notes would be there when they returned.
Keeping the Rhythm
We added a Monday/Friday cadence.
Monday
- Outline weekly focus and upcoming initiatives
- Preview sales, onboarding, deadlines
- Review metrics in Metabase
- Align the team with “why” their work mattered
Friday
Show-and-tell.
Half the time, the team built something even cooler than planned. Developers often coded late into the night, following inspiration.
Fridays became a celebration of those moments — demos, screen shares, short videos. A reminder of how creative the team could be when given autonomy.
Balancing Speed and Structure
Our biggest enemy wasn’t chaos. It was process debt.
When work moves fast:
- Tickets rot
- Specs become fiction
- Documentation ages like milk
So instead of trying to keep everything updated, we focused on keeping communication rhythmic and visible.
The structure — standup, parking lot, weekly cadence — was just enough scaffolding for creativity to thrive.
Building Trust in the Chaos
Speed wasn’t the hard part. Trust was.
In distributed teams, with code changing overnight, command-and-control management doesn’t work. You need people to do the right thing even when nobody’s watching.
Trust came from:
- Shared rhythm
- Transparent notes
- Visible metrics
- Collective decision-making
Everyone saw the same information. Everyone had a voice.
Vibe programming isn’t just about creativity — it’s about connection. People had to stay emotionally in sync to build fast.
When people felt trusted, they took bold risks. They built things that weren’t asked for because they believed in the mission.
Those spontaneous contributions were the magic — the moments that made the product feel alive.
High performance isn’t perfect alignment. It’s fast trust and shared momentum.