5⁵. Rapid innovation methodology #2

Harnessing creativity and winning with 5⁵ — part 2

As I develop on ‘Simple experiments, not a grand strategy — part 1’, the 5⁵ method challenges teams to think outside the box and come up with innovative experiments for their platform.

The 5⁵ allows the team to be more autonomous and take ownership of the process by giving them the freedom to organize themselves as they see fit.

It also provides a structured approach for evaluating and prioritizing new ideas, with a focus on the most promising areas of development through the 5 constraints:

portfolio size, timing, strategic value, budget, collaboration

This methodology can be beneficial for the team as it allows them to think differently about the platform and explore new possibilities, in a way that is aligned with the platform’s objectives or dimensions...

A concrete case study

The 5⁵ was at the heart of our team strategy at ManoMano in order to reach the goals of some annual team initiatives. Take a look at the following list:

• Ensuring systems observability - logs, traces, profiles, checks…
• Implementing SLOs, an anchor for reliability & decision making
• Tagging compliance (with Radiologist™ in-house product).
• Reducing waste or unused resources on Clouds (with CostAl™ in-house product).
• Incidents management (with FireFighter™ in-house product).
• Reliability, robustness, and resilience with Chaos practices.

Hue, so many things to imagine to improve things…

Does this give you any ideas for experiments you would like to put in you 5⁵ portfolio?

Limiting in order to innovate

Let’s look at the constraints in details. They allow to define limits in the research and thus stimulate innovation. But what are these exactly?

• Portfolio constraint: Be sure to select only a small number of experiments (5), to help focus your efforts and ensure that ideas can be pursued and implemented effectively.
• Collaboration constraint: Encouraging collaboration within the team, with other teams or individuals, possibly some partnerships with other organizations, researchers or experts in the field of the experiment to help broaden perspectives and bring in new ideas. A way to bring in user research (UR) expert to discuss your internal platform or products and conduct developers interviews.
• Strategic constraint: Aligning research and development efforts with the overall strategy and goals of the organization or team initiatives can help to ensure that resources are used effectively and that the portfolio experiments can help to support the organization’s long-term objectives.
• Time constraint: Setting a deadline for the development and implementation of a new idea or technology can help focus efforts and drive innovation. It ensures that ideas don’t languish indefinitely. The portfolio of 5 experiments should be built in 5 days. And each experiment should not take more than 5 weeks to develop, no matter how many people manage to free up time to participate in the work.
• Budget constraint: Allocating a specific budget for research and development can help to ensure that money is used effectively. But also to try to use the existing resources, while giving the opportunity to test external solutions like SaaS with a tiny budget…

55555, That’s a lot, right!?

These constraints provide a framework that can help to focus efforts, prioritize and evaluate new ideas, and ultimately stimulate innovation by providing a clear limits.

Why the number 5, you may ask? For the record, simply because at ManoMano my team was made up of 5 chapters to keep your tech platform stable and safe.

That’s why I decided to ask the 5 leads in the team to work on proposing 5 topics of innovation… Which you can imagine brought a great diversity of experiments… They then had to choose and arbitrate between them according to the value, before proposing me a final portfolio at the end of the 5 days.

Take into account, the financial side… of life ;)

Setting a budget constraint can help to ensure that resources are used effectively and efficiently. By setting a limit on the amount that can be spent on an experiment, the team is forced to prioritize and focus on the most important aspects of the experiment; They will not be able to spend without stopping ;). It also helps them to be more creative and resourceful in finding ways to achieve their goals within the budget.

Budgetary constraints can help to align the team’s efforts with the organization’s overall financial goals and objectives. In a context of financial crisis and inflation, it is important for companies to be especially mindful of their spending and to focus on experiments that have the greatest potential to generate value while being cost-effective.

You can totally adapt and reduce the amount… but it is important that the team has the means to achieve what it wants to do. This is one of the 5 constraints and it is as important as the 4 others.

How to get portfolio in 5 days?

Here is an example of how a team might organize themselves to come back with 5 ideas after 5 days:

1. Kickoff: The team would hold an initial meeting to discuss the the constraints that have already been amply described on this article. They would also establish the deadline of 5 days for coming back with 5 ideas. They designate 5 leads that will research for experiments and they fix the time of the next appointment.
2. Research phase: During this phase, leads would conduct alone research on the fields that have been identified as most promising and come up with few experiment tracks, 1 or 2.
3. Brainstorming: The team then organizes a brainstorming session on the proposed tracks. The team evaluates and assesses each of them according to its adequacy with the 5 constraints. The team would then select the 5 best ideas to present back to you. They would also prepare a brief summary of each idea and the reasoning behind their selection.

Overall, the goal is to have a clear defined thing that we will want to measure on each experiment.

Focus on the most, relevant and important.

• Simplicity invites ingenuity!
• Experiments must take little time to construct and/or evaluate.
• The experiments should be cheap.
• Seek results that speak for themselves.
• The willingness to ask simple questions is essential!

80/20 — Make sure our ideas, can take a glide

Simple, cheap and measurable… Why does your five thingy work?

The 80/20 principle, also known as the Pareto principle, states that roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. Mathematically, the 80/20 rule is roughly described by a power law distribution (also known as a Pareto distribution). In the context of 5⁵, the principle suggests that a small number of experiments are likely to have a significant impact. If a team generates and evaluates a large number of ideas, it is likely that a small number of those ideas will be particularly promising and have the potential to generate significant value.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

By applying the 80/20 principle, we can imagine that if a team develops 5 experiments, it is possible that 1 of them will be excellent and useful because it is likely that a small number of experiments will have a disproportionately large impact. This is why it’s important to not only generate as many experiments as possible in your portfolio, but also to evaluate them carefully and select the most promising to pursue further.

It is important to note that this principle is not a hard rule, but rather a general observation, which means that the rule is not always true, but it is still a good rule to keep in mind when trying to maximize resources and efforts.

Five weeks to implement ideas in your head

The most important constraint is that the team has 5 weeks to do everything. They need to get organized. If one person is not there and takes time off, the effort that can be put in will be less. Then the team has to make do with the resources available. Never push the date back.

If we consider that we develop an experiment in exactly 5 weeks, it’s possible to conduct an average of three experiments in a quarter… But because portfolio contains only 5 experiments to do in the year, it would be ideal to distribute the experiments as follows:

1. First quarter (January — March): 1 experiment
2. Second quarter (April — June): 1 experiment
3. Third quarter (July — September): 2 experiments
4. Fourth quarter (October — December): 1 experiment

This distribution allows the team to spread out the experiments over the course of the year and not overload on any specific quarter. They can try to do 2 during the summer vacations. No overlap also allows the team to focus on one experiment at a time, which is necessary to give attention and resources to each experiment and ensure its success. No overlaps please!
The key to success is to work together as a team, leveraging their different skills and specialties.

We’ll create something new, something grand .

Presentation

At the end of the 5-week period, the team would present their work and findings to you. They would present the learnings, and the results of their experimentation.

⁵⁵ — We’ll do something grand, that’s what we’ve said!

This type of exercise, where a team is given the opportunity to develop and experiment over a precise period of time, is beneficial for the team in several ways.

Firstly, it allows the team to think creatively and come up with new ideas, beyond the objectives already set. By providing a dedicated time and space for experimentation, the team can explore new possibilities and find new ways to improve the platform.

Secondly, it allows the team to be more autonomous and take ownership of the process. By giving the team the freedom to organize themselves as they see fit, they can work in a way that suits them best, and this can lead to better engagement and motivation.

Thirdly, it allows the team to test and validate their ideas in a safe space.
By conducting small-scale experiments, they can test the feasibility and effectiveness of the ideas without incurring significant risk. You don’t push yourself if you don’t get anything done after 5 weeks, the financial loss is accepted.

Lastly, it allows the team to learn and grow. By experimenting they can learn and apply that knowledge to future projects. This can also help to foster a culture of innovation within the team. Change even the way of working outside this framework.

My latest article “Valuing Innovation Within Your Technical Platform” may be a useful resource for the team as they look for dimensions on which to potentially improve their platform, keeping in mind its potential impact.

If you want to go deeper,

• “Creative Confidence” by Tom Kelley and David Kelley: This book provides practical techniques for unlocking creativity and innovation within individuals and teams, and encourages readers to embrace risk and experimentation.
• “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton Christensen: This book explores how established companies can maintain their competitive edge in the face of disruptive innovation, by understanding when and how to invest in new technologies and business models.

If you found the 5⁵ helpful or interesting, please consider using it with your colleagues! — Clement Hussenot