Ambidexterity — why delivery should never stop discovery

Ambidexterity refers to the ability to use both the right hand and the left hand equally well. In an organisational context, the term is often being used to describe the tension between two opposing business models: to compete in mature technologies and markets where efficiency, control, and incremental improvement are prized and to also compete in new technologies and markets where flexibility, autonomy, and experimentation are needed. Exploitation versus exploration.

Organisational ambidexterity
“The ability to simultaneously pursue both incremental and discontinuous innovation…from hosting multiple contradictory structures, processes, and cultures within the same firm.”
Tushman, Michael L. and O’Reilly, Charles A. (1996)

So how does this relate to our work at the Jumbo Tech Campus? We too experience the challenging trade-off between solving today’s problems and creating tomorrow’s opportunities. We refer to it as delivery versus discovery. In our context, delivery is the software development that we do based on product roadmaps and product backlogs, whereas discovery is about better understanding problems and challenges we can solve and to identify where we can make the biggest impact (this post explains how Business Design helps us here). Discovery is part of the delivery cycle; successful discovery could potentially lead to items on your delivery roadmap, but this does not necessarily have to be the case. Successful discovery might also mean trashing ideas and prototypes that do not deliver their expected value.

Somehow, discovery always seems to be the first thing to drop when delivery requires attention. The interesting thing is that everyone knows that discovery is equally important. So why is it so hard to work on both simultaneously? The trick here is to approach the two differently. Here’s how.

People

When working on discovery, pull your teams out of their daily context and daily routines. Creativity requires a certain peace of mind where deadlines, meetings and incidents don’t help. We do believe that it is important to work with existing teams and existing subject matter experts here, yet we do try to provide the physical and mental room for creativity to flourish.

Process

Pulling people out of their daily routine helps to focus on discovery. A clear challenge, a timebox and the right tools do the rest. These ingredients help to structure the creative process and help to produce deliverables that can be shared and used throughout the delivery cycle. For an overview of tools and techniques we commonly use I suggest this article on running a Discovery Sprint.

Technology

In our experience it is really helpful to think outside of your existing production infrastructure. The aim of your discovery efforts should be to validate ideas, concepts, or prototypes. Try to think of the minimum ‘solution’ you would need to test your hypotheses, which requires creativity — and oftentimes a lot less development effort than you would expect. So don’t get yourself stuck in technical dependencies here, but work your way around them — in the spirit of Lean Startup principles.

Supposedly, no more than one percent of people are naturally ambidextrous — and I seriously doubt this percentage to be any higher in an organisational context. Although discovery and delivery are both part of the development cycle, it helps to approach the two differently; delivery should not stand in the way of successful discovery — or the other way around.