Trash Can Tracking — All Things Product Podcast with Teresa Torres and Petra Wille

On the podcast All Things Product, Petra Wille proposes that teams keep a visible record of rejected problems and solutions; an empty record of rejected solutions means nobody compared options.

Product teams track the work they ship, but the work they decide not to pursue usually leaves no trace. Petra Wille and Teresa Torres, who host the podcast All Things Product, discuss Wille's answer: a trash can drawn on the team's planning boards. Each customer problem or solution the team rejects goes in the can, so rejected work is tracked as carefully as delivered work.

• The show notes call an empty can of rejected solutions a clear warning sign, because it means the team is not comparing several options before choosing one.
• An empty can of rejected problems can mean a shortage of new ideas, a command-and-control culture, or a strong strategy that filters problems out as intended.
• The can also settles problems the team has already decided to drop but that others in the company keep raising again.
• The full transcript is for paying subscribers. This account comes from the open show notes.

A team can show a reviewer that it compared options by keeping the rejected ones in view beside the chosen one. Using the record this way in a design review is an inference and is not the hosts' claim.

Derived by Working Surface from the article. Source line: An empty solution-discovery trash can is a clear red flag: it means the team isn't comparing and contrasting multiple options.

25 September 2026: the defaults, the rejected options and the material an AI can reach decide results before anyone chooses.