Tag: Decisions

Product Roadmaps

What is a Product Roadmap for? What is the “job to be done” for which people “hire” Product Roadmaps? Of course, there are lots of different behaviours that Product Roadmaps support. Some of these behaviours are good, improving our chances of delivering something of value. Some, not so good. Even what might be considered “not so good”…
Relaxing constraints, moving mountains

A sorely underutilised way to tilt the playing field in Product Development is to simply break the rules that everyone else is playing by. This “thinking different” is often the underlying enabler to many successful products and business models. Southwest did it with completely ridiculous turnaround times, which completely changed the economics of running an airline. AirBnB are…
Comparing Cost of Delay approaches

There are many different ways to approach Cost of Delay. It ranges from very simple categorisation or qualitative assessments, to more rigorous quantification of Cost of Delay. None of these is inherently “wrong”. (Rarely are things as black and white as that.) That does not mean they are equal, however. Some approaches to Cost of Delay are a lot more…
Degrees, Decisions, Design

What is design? As an engineer, I have some tacit knowledge of design – but I have always struggled to explain what it really means. When I started my career, I spent most of my days dealing with the vagaries of moving water and earth, applying different designs that attempted to bend these elements to my…
MoneyDev: quantifying value vs gut-feel

Billy Beane, the manager of the Oakland A’s baseball team was in trouble. After a successful 2001 season he was losing three of his best players but he had no money to replace them. As Plato said: “Necessity is the mother of invention”. With his back to the wall, rather than rely on the instinct…
Lessons on patience: the benefit of delay

In an earlier post, I discussed the importance of speed and the cost of delay for organisations that aren’t leading the market. For those who are attempting to lead the market (as opposed to a fast follower strategy, like Samsung) the Cost of Delay is still there, and speed is still a vital ingredient, but…
Black Swan Farming using Cost of Delay

Discover, nurture and speed up the delivery of value Improving prioritization has become a tired concept in most IT departments, and yet it has the potential to change the conversation from one of cutting cost, to delivering valuable solutions as quick as the business needs it. This paper examines how Maersk Line applied an economic…
Estimation is hard – but worthwhile

One of the most painful parts of product development is the estimating part. Dan Milstein talks (at length) about the complexity of this in his post about why we all suck at making estimates. When you first hit this pain, you think “We should just be more careful at the specification stage”. But this turns…
Value: a framework for thinking

How might we think about the potential value of the products and services we could develop? Is there some way of structuring our thoughts so as to more quickly surface the potential value? I want to explain a bit about the background and development of a framework that attempts to do just that. This framework…
Real Options: Embracing Uncertainty

Delaying a decision as long as possible is often a good idea! Sounds counterintuitive doesn’t it, particularly for those of us with a well developed “sense of urgency” (like me!). Real Options is about knowing when you have to make a decision. They are a great way to avoid making early decisions that could be irreversible.…