Whiteboardware: How to Stop Talking About the Work and Start Doing It

Let me set the scene for you: You’re standing at the whiteboard, a marker in hand. Around you, a group of well-intentioned teammates stares intently as you draw boxes and arrows, each more detailed than the last. You’re knee-deep in terms like “synergy,” “scalability,” and “MVP.” Someone takes a picture of the whiteboard like it’s the Mona Lisa. You leave the meeting feeling productive.

But here’s the harsh truth:

you just spent another hour talking about the work—not doing it.

Congratulations, my friends—you’ve fallen victim to Whiteboardware.

Whiteboardware is the dangerous illusion of progress.

It’s when engineering teams spend weeks, even months, sketching grand ideas, writing pristine docs, and debating hypothetical architectures, all while avoiding the one thing that actually moves the needle: doing the work.

Why We Fall Into the Whiteboardware Trap

Talking feels productive, doesn’t it?

Planning gives us control.

Brainstorming feels creative.

But as Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, wisely said,

“Action produces information.”

When you build, you learn. You discover what scales and what doesn’t. You find the hidden edge cases, the performance bottlenecks, and the user behaviors you never saw coming. You iterate and refine. And most importantly, you create something tangible—a prototype, a feature, a system—that didn’t exist yesterday.

But when you overindulge in Whiteboardware, you’re stuck in a cycle of perfecting a blueprint for a house that may never be built. It’s like assembling IKEA furniture: the instructions are great until you realize you’re holding a piece that doesn’t look like the picture. The only way forward is to dive in and start turning screws.

Lessons From Skunkworks and the World’s Tallest Bridges

Let’s take a page from history. During World War II, Lockheed Martin famously launched Skunkworks, a team built to move fast, think scrappy, and deliver innovation. They ditched bureaucracy and spent more time building than debating.

That approach gave us the first U.S. jet fighter in just 143 days.

Closer to the modern era, China built the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge, the highest bridge in the world, in just three years. Was there planning involved? Of course. But the magic wasn’t in perfecting the blueprints. The magic was in quickly iterating, problem-solving on the fly, and letting action uncover the answers.

These teams weren’t reckless; they were agile. They understood that real progress isn’t about how pretty the plan is—it’s about how quickly you can execute, adapt, and deliver.

What You Can Do Starting Today

1. Get Something Into Production Fast Stop aiming for the perfect solution. Ship something small. It doesn’t need to be elegant—it just needs to work. You can always refine later.
2. Adopt a Skunkworks Mindset Treat your team like a startup within a company. Cut red tape where you can. Empower engineers to make decisions. Create a safe environment to try, fail, and learn fast.
3. Replace Perfect With Progress The first iteration of anything will be flawed, and that’s okay. Use it to collect real-world feedback. Flawed in production is better than perfect on a whiteboard.
4. Set Hard Deadlines for Discussions Limit debates and planning sessions to an hour or two. Then move forward with what you have. As long as you’ve identified your riskiest assumption, you’re ready to go.
5. Celebrate Doing, Not Talking Shift your culture to celebrate what’s shipped, not what’s planned. Share demos, prototypes, and tangible progress to keep momentum high.

Stop Planning Your Masterpiece—Start Painting

Whiteboarding has its place. It’s a great way to align, brainstorm, and explore possibilities. But don’t let it become your comfort zone. Engineers don’t join teams to talk about code; they join to write it. They want to build, break, and rebuild. They want to see their work in the hands of users.

Thinking about the work isn’t doing the work. Only doing the work is doing the work.

So, grab your keyboard, push some code, and get ready to iterate. As they say in Skunkworks:

“Act like a startup, even if you’re in a Fortune 500.”

And hey, if you’re still reading this instead of building something, I’ve got bad news: this article might just be Whiteboardware too.

Go. Do. Win.