You’ve just joined a new project, and things: Don’t. Quite. Feel. Right.
You know you need to build feature X, that much seems clear. But is it? As you begin your work you start hitting walls.
“Should we do it like A, or maybe like B?” You don’t know. You ask your team. They don’t know. “Is Y in scope? What about Z? Maybe?” No one really knows.
This is a flag. A big red one. You are in the murky zone.
What you are missing is context!
Why, why, why? Zoom out. “What’s the problem? What outcome are we trying to achieve? Success: What does it look like? Once we build feature X, how will we know we’ve been successful?” A bunch of these questions are the same. But asking them in slightly different ways can trigger good conversations.
But, but…
“I’ll become known as the Cautious Critic, the Deliberate Delayer, the Skeptical Staller, the Thorough Thwarter!”
This doesn’t have to be a big deal. And it needn’t take a lot of time.
Get your team together, with your manager or stakeholder. 30 mins, maybe less.
“We just want to get some more context on this feature to help us make the best decisions.” You’ll want to:
- Generate a problem statement
- Agree a clear outcome, something that’s measurable
Sometimes, even with great processes, context gets lost along the way. Taking a moment to quickly get everyone re-aligned is nothing but a good thing.
Hey presto!
“It’s option A and Z is definitely out of scope.” Why? It doesn’t help get us towards our outcome. You know, that thing which is now our North Star. That allows us to focus and say no to things.
This is good. This is great!
You now know what to build, you can make clear decisions and you can measure success!
