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Two impactful ideas to apply in software product development

In this publication, I look at the planning and execution of software products from many angles. In this post, I list out some elements which are critical for better planning and execution.

Elsewhere in this publication, I have shared some criticism of the predominant industry practices so far be it for me to criticise without putting forward an alternative. What I share here is not an exhaustive list of all important practices — neither would that be possible as context will change what is required — it is a list of what I have currently found to be essential elements. By essential I mean, if we want to maximise the competitiveness of the organisation over the long term, these must be part of what we are doing. So disclaimers aside the alternative to the current orthodoxy, in my experience, is to:

1. Plan with a clear & aligned view of the outcomes your organisation seeks to achieve at the centre of everything you do
2. Deeply understand your customer’s problems, needs and the options you have to address them

Now whether 2 is before one or 1 is before 2 is beside the point as they exist in a cyclical and iterative continuum. These no doubt seem self-evident yet for how many organisations could we say the regular practice of both is true, most of the time? From my observation across various organisations both those I have been a part of, those I have coached, those my wider network participates in and those organisations who have shared how they work, commitment to these elements continues to be weak. Whilst I concede that more businesses than before are making progress in item 2 (although I am not convinced it's a strong minority let alone a majority) I suspect that even fewer are making progress in item 1. My suspicion is supported by observation as well as knowledge of the downstream forces that can make such practices difficult in present-day organisations.

The orthodoxy still is activity-focused and dominates current practices. Even organisations using conceivably outcome-focused approaches slip back into activity-oriented behaviour. For instance, even if detailed product work is appropriately oriented towards outcomes, if those efforts are housed within classically activity-based constructs such as initiatives or programmes there is likely significant waste.

That said, the good news is the body of knowledge is growing and the number of advocates sharing practices that help organisations orient towards outcomes is increasing. I think the adoption of practices such as continuous discovery, opportunity mapping, other context-building practices such as Wardley mapping and the maturation of goal frameworks such as PuMP or the shift of OKRs towards a more disciplined outcomes-oriented approach is all good progress. It is the growing adoption of these which I describe as ‘a new orthodoxy’ that awaits us on the horizon.

Here are some more details of elements that in my experience are important to establishing a context that is specific enough for all parts of an organisation to align to.

Plan with a clear & aligned view of the outcomes your organisation seeks to achieve at the centre of everything you do

This sounds incredibly obvious but I challenge you to interrogate what is happening in your organisation and see if you can honestly say you are achieving this. Specifically, I mean;

1. Be clear on the longer-term outcome desired — work hard to have a statement you and your collaborators can agree on, free of weasel words and describing an outcome that describes an improved reality for your target audience. This might be a vision document, a result as defined in PuMP, An OKR defined for a longer timeframe such as 3–5 years, can be shorter or longer, as long as it's realistic to achieve in the timeframe. Note: When we are clear and aligned on what we are seeking to achieve, we can achieve amazing results!
2. be clear on the shorter-term outcomes needed to support this goal. Again this could be a result as defined in PuMP, an outcome-oriented OKR or any other form of expressing a goal that is specific enough that the probability that any given two collaborators' understanding is similar enough to be pulling together in the same direction most of the time.
3. be clear on how they relate to each other and the long-term outcome — this might be expressed with a Result Map as defined in PuMP, a map of the relationships between outcome-oriented OKRs, an opportunity tree, a pre-requisite tree as defined in the Theory of Constraints or any other goal relationship approach. I am not sure there is any single method for doing this well, I only know what worked well for teams I worked with — we used the Result Map notation that Stacey Barr developed for PuMP and documented our outcome-oriented objectives (and potential objectives) onto this format. This included some very long-term objectives which described the long-term success of our business. More on this in a post by Stacey Barr linked below. The key thing here is that we can interrogate the chain of causality — i.e. what things need to be true for a more macro outcome to be achieved. For instance, a segment of a chain might look like this:

More on causal chains and result maps in a later post.

Deeply understand your customer’s problems, needs and the options you have to address them

This is a very high-level summary — there are many writing about approaches to understanding customer needs so I will just outline some key elements. Use your methodology of choice to achieve this understanding.

1. What are your customer’s needs and what problems do they face?
2. Which of these needs or problems if addressed support progress towards the outcomes that are important for your organisation's success?
3. What are the options for addressing these?

There are many frameworks and approaches for achieving each of the above and in later posts, I will elaborate with examples. Doing some of these elements but not all of these elements won’t prevent you from making progress but will make it unlikely you are optimum in decision-making on prioritisation. The combination of these elements is key in the connections that are made in understanding our purpose and long-term goals back to your short-term efforts.

Let’s continue on our journey in this publication to elaborate on these ideas as I share what I’ve experienced, experimenting with these practices over the last decade or so.

I publish my drafts publicly so if you have feedback or input please contribute in the comments. I will continue to edit and evolve these posts as part of an overall corpus on these topics and themes.