Learning

Software product leaders invest in modern DevOps pipelines so that they can dramatically reduce the cycle time from “idea” to “customer deployment”. But how effective is the path in the opposite direction that closes the feedback loop? What is the cycle time from “customer perception” to “insight gained”?

Plan Next Quarter

As a product leader, your decisions flow downstream to the teams that execute delivery and discovery. Product leaders leverage systems that make the Work and Plans of the Teams visible to all. These systems enable product leaders to confirm the connection from strategy to execution. But the teams are empowered to define and own the work and plans to produce outputs that they think will achieve the sub-goals.

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Try this:

As product leader, co-create the Sub-Goals and Desired Outcomes with the team leads. Then support a collaborative Quarterly Planning event across all teams to help synchronize on dependencies and risks. The quarterly cadence will also reinforce shorter time-boxes that help encourage small bets and iterative development.

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Decision Architecture tip:

Collect and prioritize the decisions-to-make that are needed to unblock the quarterly planning event, using a prioritization scheme like the Eisenhower Matrix.

Eisenhower Matrix

Effectively prioritize and delegate decisions to keep the most important, urgent decisions front and center

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Feedback Loops

Product leaders should sponsor ceremonies where business leaders can go and see Outputs (i.e. demos) and assess whether desired Outcomes were met (i.e. product metrics). These assessments should yield a shared understanding of Insights on outcomes, across the business leaders, team leaders, and product leaders. The insights provide feedback needed to check whether any Delivered Value was truly/actually realized, any potentially validate or invalidate a Hypothesis that framed an experiment.

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Try this:

As product leader, be an active sponsor of a ceremony that creates a dialog that connects the outputs from the teams to the desired outcomes for the product and, ultimately, for the business. Map the flow from realized-value back to decision making, to strengthen the role of insights and rapid learning into the strategic planning practices.

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Decision Architecture tip:

When assessing outcomes from outputs (e.g. at a product demo), recognize that the causality between the change you made and the impact observed is uncertain as well. This is best handled probabilistically, to acknowledge the uncertainty.

Fielding Outcomes

Evaluating decisions as "bets" against future uncertainties and measuring good/bad decisions based on process - distinguishing between skill and luck.

Learn more ->

Learning

Plan Next Quarter

Eisenhower Matrix

Feedback Loops

Fielding Outcomes

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