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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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!). …