ProductCoachPaul

You have a brilliant digital product idea? Great! That’s the hard part, now to get stuck into the fun & easy delivery bit…right?

Wrong. Delivery can be fun, but it is rarely easy.

Bringing ideas & concepts to life, is like a tug of war between the ‘why’s’ and the ‘why not’s’ – I often see product teams struggle with delivery, because they do not focus early enough on the ‘Why not’ side of the tug of war rope.

Don’t get me wrong. The ‘why’ and the ‘what’ are great ways to begin to uncover and shape new product ideas & concepts. When things become shaped enough, its only natural to want to know more about the ‘how’ and ‘when’ – the solutions and capabilities needed to ship, along with how much effort and budget it will take to bring those brilliant ideas to life.

Great, so you now have the ideas and an iterative delivery plan to ship it…right?

Wrong. Even the simplest of ideas can have complex delivery challenges. You will never ‘ship product’ if you only focus on the ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘how’, and ‘when’. The only thing you will deliver is unnecessary stress, blood, sweat and tears to you, your teams and other stakeholders including end customers.

Thankfully, there is a simple fix that will supercharge your ability to ship product consistently.

Start asking these 4 simple questions as early in the concepting & design stage as possible.

What not?
Why not?
How not?
When not?

Every ‘not’ question is a pull on the rope – things that create a tug on delivery. Things from strategy, capacity, capabilities, dependencies, governance, compliance, bureaucracy, politics, go to market, and readiness, all come out of the woodwork when setting out to ship something – leadership, research, marketing, finance, IT, compliance, operations, external partners / suppliers (the list goes on and on), will all have a good reason to tug on the rope that makes shipping harder.

Great product teams know to focus on finding, removing or navigating these ‘not’s’, so are bold enough to be open, transparent and invite the ‘nots’ into the early stages of discovery and design…whether they fear them or not, they know its a delivery imperative, so embrace the journey to have the conversations and get those ‘nots’ off the rope.

Having the ability and fortitude to invest time in good relationships, nurturing a collaborative cross functional team dynamic, and being the guy who brings the rope for a friendly tug of war, are essential parts of a product persons toolbox – its one of the ingredients to continuously ship meaningful value outcomes.

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