I very nearly cried when I realised I had to delete 30,000 words from my Book.

A week after I published Rolling Rocks Downhill, someone said, “You must be delighted!”

I smiled, but then I felt my face drop, and I heard myself say, “No not really.”

I didn’t burst out into tears … but I thought I might.

I’d spent 10 years writing the damned book and it was as good as I would ever get it.

The initial reviews were fab (and they still are).

And yet … I was horribly disappointed when I published it.

Here’s why:

Two months before I published, I culled 30,000 words.

That’s a LOT OF WORDS.

Good words.

I’ve still got them. They’re fantastic.

But they didn’t belong in that book and I had to KILL them.

It makes me sad, now, because, probably, no one will ever see them.

But I had to get rid of them because they didn’t belong.

They were stopping me shipping.

So I chopped ruthlessly and the book was launched within weeks, and now thousands have read it, and (I hope) I’ve changed a few lives.

Why am I sharing this?

One of the key lessons in RRD is that you must ruthlessly, brutally manage scope.

You’re chasing benefits, not features.

But: no matter how logical that is IT HURTS HURTS HURTS.

Remember this when your product owner is struggling.

What seems obvious isn’t easy.

It’s hard. It hurts.

And … it works.

    Clarke “the bottleneck guy” Ching

    Written by

    Author: The Bottleneck Rules & Rolling Rocks Downhill.

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