The Bill Hicks bit about welcoming his audience to “you’re wrong night” lives in my head rent free.
Often, when I speak with well-intentioned colleagues who have a new and exciting idea, I instantly let them know they’ve come along to the “you’re wrong meeting”. It can feel to them like I’m simply trying to shut their idea down because I don’t like it.
I don’t mean to. I almost always have no idea if their idea is a good one or not. But the minute I say “well, let’s do some discovery on that idea”, it feels like I’ve just told them they’re full of shit and that their idea isn’t good enough to get on with.
The reaction
The consequence of this tends to go one of two ways:
Flight…
- teams keep ideas to themselves
- low engagement from stakeholders
- tuning out of all digital engagement
Or fight…
- frustration at the perceived lack of action
- demands to “just get on with it”
- discovery phases appearing endless and inefficient
What I want to encourage is a way of validating ideas that isn’t so scary and doesn’t feel like we’re just delaying or wasting valuable delivery time. In his Mind the Product interview, Anthony Marter suggests perhaps discovery is the wrong term, and I don’t disagree with him. There must be a better way to get people on board rather than just feel challenged.
What even is discovery?
“First, you need to discover whether there are real users out there that want this product… Second, you need to discover a product solution to this problem that is usable, useful, and feasible.”
Marty Cagan
Product Thought Leader
I strongly suggest there is a constant level of work on that first part of user understanding. This way, when new ideas come along, we already know half of the answer. It also means idea validation doesn’t take forever, and we can provide better immediate feedback.
The second part of that quote is a little harder, and depends on complexity of the problem. What shouldn’t happen is that the delivery team just get asked questions about the “feasibility” part.
Delivery gonna deliver
Many stakeholders don’t care what we think, or understand why we’d want to discover more. “You’re the delivery team – just get on with it!”.
They’ve already understood why their idea is great… it’s a no-brainer to them.
This is where I present my formal invitation to You’re Wrong Night.
There could be all sorts of evidence to suggest you’re idea’s good, but if a delivery team have not been brought along with the discovery of why we’d do this, we won’t ever trust it, nor will we be motivated to achieve its goals.
Why split discovery and delivery teams?
I’ve been in both discovery and delivery teams. My experience has been that:
- Discovery teams get frustrated that the delivery team didn’t listen to what we gave them.
- Delivery teams get frustrated that the discovery phase wasn’t handed over well enough and has big gaps in what has been provided.
This isn’t a failure of either. It’s the simple fact there is any form of handover. The more delivery teams are involved with discovery, the better the outcome of the product.
John Bourne 