Flexible annual planning

Empowered teams get to decide what to build based on first-hand customer knowledge around pain points and unmet needs. Annual planning is the opposite, right? It is big upfront planning which often puts business goals above customer needs!

Waterfall is a bad product development process but that doesn’t mean that we should get rid of all processes. It’s the same as with bad annual planning. Annual planning lets teams get out of the short-term, quarterly objectives, and start thinking about the bigger picture and how they can achieve their goals.

The difference between good and bad planning comes down to assumptions. Bad plans dictate what outputs should be built and don’t pass along the context and assumptions beyond the chosen solutions. Good annual planning focuses on the Data, Insights and Beliefs that lead to the suggested solutions, along with the assumptions that must hold true for these features to achieve the expected goals.

This Week’s Updates

Enabling the Team

The Dream Behind the Complaint by Petra Wille
When a direct report brings a complaint, there's often a deeper, unspoken need. Kenneth Berger’s framework suggests clarifying your intentions, asking thoughtfully, accepting responses, and reiterating.

The 4 Interview Red Flags Hiring Managers Say Concern Them Most by Eva Chan
When going to your next interview, come prepared, avoid dishonesty, rude language/behaviour and avoid trash talking ex-colleagues.

Product Direction

Input Metrics Are So Hard That Most Product Teams Give Up by Daniel Schmidt
This article explores a 3 phase method to identify input metrics that unlock the potential of product teams; mapping business drivers, validating metrics and placing data-driven bets.

Empowered Teams Still Need Annual Plans by Rory Madden
Learn more about how effective annual planning can provide crucial direction to teams while maintaining their autonomy.

Continuous Research

Unmoderated User Tests: Optimize And Scale Your Research by Nikki Anderson-Stanier
Explore how to conduct user tests without a moderator, with unmoderated usability sessions.

Accelerating Research With AI by Kate Moran and Maria Rosala
Over-relying on tools can become a burden and a blocker. AI can speed up certain research tasks, but is currently most helpful in the planning and analysis stages.

Continuous Design

The Daily Application Of Brute-Force Ideation by Ben Sauer
Brute-forcing encourages people to consider possibilities that weren't obvious - to go so far beyond their initial approaches that the results become unique.

Research Basics Every Designer Should Know by Lirra Hill
Achieve research success by focusing on design research fundamentals: mastering research design, refining the art and science of asking questions, and uncovering and presenting insights.

Continuous Delivery

Web Components Are Not the Future by Ryan Carniato
Ryan argues that Web Components possibly pose the biggest risk to the future of the web due to bad abstractions, clunky DX and the risk of stifling innovation.

Web Components Are Not The Future — They’re The Present by Cory LaViska
Cory recognizes that a fundamental piece of the platform has changed and it's time to embrace the interoperable component model that Web Component APIs have given us.

UXDX EMEA is moving to Berlin:
19 - 21 May 2025

After 9 years in Dublin, we decided to move UXDX EMEA to a new city: Berlin.

We’re really excited about our new home, but we’re also equally excited about continuing our mission of helping teams work better together across Product, Research, Design and Dev. Hopefully we’ll see you there!

FREE COMMUNITY EVENTS 

Check out more upcoming community events 

Video of the Week:
Improving Product Design with Futurism

Jod explores the intriguing connection between design thinking and evolutionary processes, offering practical tools like signals, drivers, and scenarios to envision possible futures. Whether you're a designer, strategist, or innovation leader, this talk provides valuable insights on how to anticipate and create the future you want to see. Check it out now👇👇

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question: Do you have KPIs aligned with your strategy?

Most teams are using Output based metrics to align with their strategy with 23.7% of the vote. Although if you combine the results for no strategy and no KPIs these come to 26.9% of the vote so maybe that is the actual winner?

Interestingly, effort metrics were in overall second place. I remember working in a place where we had to clock-in and clock-out of work each day, but I thought most companies had gotten rid of this approach as it is not correlated with success. I guess it is still alive and well out there.

Outcome metrics are in third place with 17.3% of the vote and Impact metrics came last with just 11.5%.

While most companies claim to be agile, if we set KPIs focused on Effort and Output we’ll never change the culture to be performance oriented. Looking at this from an optimist’s perspective, that means that there is a lot of quick and easy progress that we can make in our organisations. The glass is always half full!