Discovery and Delivery (Leading Initiatives, part 2)
Practical Guide
Discovery
The Power of Getting Clarity: Narrowing Down the Entropy
Discovery starts with a map in your hands: you can see roads, lakes, rivers, mountains and valleys. Discovery is a time to interpret a map. Together with the tech lead, key players, enablers and supporters validate various assumptions, options, propositions and strategies, and end up with an agreement about the journey.
Kick-off
The kick-off meeting is an occasion to create momentum. Keep it short, simple and transparent. In my opinion, the best way to do it is to present preliminary results of your user story mapping or opportunity solutions tree.
Use tools like user story mapping that introduce the flow and create room for the common understanding of complex problems. User story mapping will help you show the role of each product team in the initiative, and amplify the opportunities and problems to solve.
The opportunity solution tree will help you not to lose the desired outcome from your sight, explore related opportunities and validate assumptions.
Both tools, user story mapping and opportunity solution tree are great visualisation tools that will allow you to communicate with your stakeholders and peers very easily. Preliminary user story mapping and opportunity solution trees are great ways to start in-depth discoveries in small groups after the kick-off meeting.
As an Initiative owner, you become the voice and the face of initiative and related products: be loud, be visible. You have to inform very clearly about the next steps, the discovery timeline and the deadline. Also, everyone should have a clear understanding of your expectations as Initiative owner: on this stage of the initiative, key players should already drive the small discovery sessions and be responsible for notes, records and visualisations. For the momentum to be effective, you have to maintain discipline and focus and have to create an information flow.
Discipline and Focus
Having a meaningful debate without capturing minutes and action points means that all valuable thoughts disappear in the air of the meeting room and people may not remember them the next day. Agile is not when we are holding hands and singing “Kumbaya” at the meeting and hoping for a good end. Working in an agile way does not justify a lack of formal discipline.
Lack of formal documentation and focus leads to “initiative anarchy”. At this moment, you can perceive the initiative owner role as thankless, but initiative without a “direction” drains the energy from all participants and leads to poor results.
Information Flow
Information flow eliminates the feeling that discovery is idle and simply, builds a dynamic movement toward the discovery goal. Create slots for weekly or bi-weekly informative catchups, log on and track issues, and monitor progress. Create a slack channel and make sure that all unknowns and questions are answered or addressed by domain experts.
Tools and Books
Jeff Patton: User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product
- Stories aren’t a written form of requirements; telling stories through collaboration with words and pictures is a mechanism that builds shared understanding.
- Stories aren’t the requirements; they’re discussions about solving problems for our organisation, our customers and our users, that lead to agreements on what to build.
- Your job isn’t to build more software faster: it’s to maximize the outcome and impact you get from what you choose to build ” xliv
Teresa Torres: Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products That Create Customer Value and Business Value
- Opportunity solution tree diagram
- Interviewers techniques: be mindful of the distinction between “actual” and “perceived” behaviour — “What criteria do you see when purchasing a pair of jeans?” vs “Tell me about the last time you purchased a pair of jeans” (80).
Delivery
Get Focused: Keeping the Momentum
You are walking on the journey with a clear goal to achieve your destination.
It is not rocket science to start discovery with a big kick-off meeting, the real challenge is maintaining focus on the long delivery phase.
Crisis
The delivery phase is the least grateful initiative phase.
The initial enthusiasm is over and everything is seemingly set on the roadmap. For you, as an initiative owner, the topic itself became less attractive and you would love to do something else. This sleepy time is altered by firefighting, when one part of the organisation decides to change priorities, roadmaps are reshuffled and you try to find lost balance. These constant upside-downs may cause you will feel bad at work. Don’t be afraid to share your feelings with your line manager (if you are lucky like me to have such a relationship) and ask for help or advice.
Coaching
In regard to discipline, the role of the initiative owner is similar to the role of the scrum master or agile coach. The initiative owner removes organisational impediments, especially in the delivery phase. Also cares that all participants understand what’s the next important thing.
Tools and Books
Lyssa Adkins: Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Manager in Transition
- Coach as Problem Solver (P. 183)
- Coach as Conflict Navigator (p.203)
Wrap up
The initiative is a complex change. As an initiative owner, you cannot execute it alone. Together with initiative key players and your tech lead you to have a better chance to turn your plans into reality.
You will speed up your initiative while using product and project management questions and tools in the right contexts.
Keeping formal discipline in place will improve transparency in relationships and communication.
Hopefully, you retrieve joy from work, a valuable product for your customers and ensure your peers will survive initiative without harm and scars.
Check List: Prediscovery: Mapping the Uncharted Territory
- The use cases
- The list of business & tech constraints
- The list of stakeholders
- Tech lead — tech options & pitfalls
- Key players, enablers, supporters
- Set up 1:1 meeting with Key players
- What do you don’t know?
- Sandbox
Tools: Miro, Google doc, RACI
Ideation: Radial graph
Check List: Discovery: The Power of Getting Clarity
- Kick-Off — keep it simple & informative
- Split discovery into business vs. tech-driven (if needed)
- Initial meeting with tech writers
- Initial meeting to discuss testing strategy end to end — identify possible pitfalls
- What do you don’t know?
Tools: Miro, Google Docs, Slack
Ideation: User story mapping, Opportunity Solution Tree
Check List: Delivery: Get Focused
- Weekly or bi-weekly catch-ups
- Book your time for tools update (Jira, Slack)
- Discuss the plans with tech writers
- Discuss the plans with the release manager
Tools: Jira, Slack, Canva
Ideation: Visual reporting
