The Main Thing: What makes one improvement better than another?

There are always lots of things that can be fixed. How do you prioritise among completely separate but equally interesting sounding options?

We have the same problem with prioritising product initiatives. What if our research tells us that there is potential in an adjacent product line, a new geography or in streamlining the onboarding of the product. Each of the three appears promising.

This is where a product vision and strategy come into play. Someone needs to make the hard choices that say where we are willing to invest our time and resources - even when other areas look promising.

For process improvements, we need a similar vision. Toyota managed to dominate the automobile market with a simple vision: one-piece flow. This meant that every improvement could be compared to how it helped to move closer to one-piece flow. We need something similar for software development.

In software lead time is key. We need to remove all blocking dependencies from idea to satisfied customers (ZeroBlockers for short). Prioritising improvements that enhance the team's autonomy and empowerment will lead us to greater efficiency and success.

This Weeks Updates

Enabling the Team

The Evolution of the Executive Team by Ed Batista
Ed discusses four aspects of executive teams: identity, composition, leadership, and culture and how they constantly evolve over time.

Product Trios: What They Are, Why They Matter, and How to Get Started by Teresa Torres
All you ever wanted to know about product trios, the benefits of working this way, who should be responsible for what in a trio, and much more.

Product Direction

Nine Lessons From My First Year As A Design System Product Manager by Michael Palmer
Michael shares his experience working on the BBC design system from the benefits they bring to the adoption challenges and more.

All Business Strategies Fall Into 4 Categories by Jerome Barthelemy
Adapt similar strategies in your industry, import from other industries, combine from multiple industries or create from scratch.

Continuous Discovery

How to Conduct An Effective Card Sort by Nikki Anderson-Stanier
Card sorting helps you understand how your users process and categorize information Nikki shares a primer on how to get started.

The Diverge-and-Converge Technique for UX Workshops by Therese Fessenden
Avoid group think by getting people to work separately first and then converge ideas.

Continuous Design

How To Become A Senior Designer by Yutong & Yunan Xue
Some solid, and transferrable advice on moving up in your career. You need to shift from being a task-doer to owning an outcome.

Spot On by Kelly Smith
Creativity is connecting the dots. So the more wide and varied your experience the more dots that you have to connect.

Continuous Delivery

How Serverless Security Shifts To The Left by Ike Gabriel Yuson
It’s easy to think that serverless is secure right out of the box. But like any other type of architecture, security measures still need to be implemented. 

Introducing the RIG Model by Kaj Bromose and Lars Lindegaard Mikkelsen
The RIG model helps teams build a microservice system that guarantees eventual data consistency.

New Speakers Announced!

Check out the new speakers joining us at EMEA 2024 in Dublin. Don't miss this opportunity - secure your place for this October event today.

FREE COMMUNITY EVENTS 

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TRAINING COURSES

Learn More about ZeroBlockers

New Video Released This Week

Watch Alexis Macleod, Design Director at Electrolux, as she explores the integration of digital innovation with traditional hardware in smart appliance development. Discover the challenges and successes of merging IoT with user-centric design in this insightful talk. It's perfect for those interested in the future of smart home technology. 👇👇

Job of the Week

Senior Product Designer, Trust and Safety
🏬 GameChanger
📌 Remote, US

About GameChanger
GameChanger is a sports technology company founded in 2009, offering mobile apps and a website platform for amateur sports teams to track game statistics, communicate, and share highlights.

See role details here

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question was: How did you pitch the last improvement?

There were two camps around the best way to raise issues: 33% highlight the issue alone and 52% also included suggested potential solutions.

On the one hand, managers are really busy, so the phrase "bring me solutions, not problems" makes a lot of sense. But equally, people need to be able to flag issues early that could cause problems, even before they know how to fix the problem.

My view is that the types of issues that typically arise are not like the quality issues in an assembly line. This lowers the urgency so we don't need andon cord style alerts. Since our goal is to try to get the change to happen the key is to make it as easy as possible. Therefore I lean towards bringing potential solutions along with the issues that you raise.

What was also interesting was that 30% of people focused solely on the team impact, 34% on the business impact and 20% on both. I remember being confused when I would raise issues impacting our team and nothing would happen. The best chance you have of success is tying it directly to a KPI of your manager or stakeholder. These tend to be business metrics so, in my opinion, including the business impact increases the chances of success. Although as one person comments, they raise the team and business impact, along with solutions "but still not getting buy-in". Change is hard!

Finally, 15% of people selected Other. But none of them commented so they decided to keep their secrets with them :)