The Main Thing: Where to make improvements - part deux!

Last week we talked about using a product vision to be able to compare different improvement initiatives. But a vision alone is not enough. Given the complex nature of software development, changes in one area can actually slow down the delivery of software as a whole. This is where the Theory of Constraints comes in.

The Theory of Constraints claims that every process can only move as fast as it's slowest part, or it's bottleneck. Any improvements before the bottleneck will actually hurt the system because it will push even more work towards the slowest part and overwhelm the people there even more.

But how do you know where the bottleneck is?

Backlogs can help us - Ready for Design, Ready for Dev, Ready for Test, Ready for Release. If we keep reducing the size of our backlogs some of them will remain stubbornly high. These are the slowest moving parts of our process. In most companies, the bottleneck is in releasing code. Going from a feature written to getting the software into the customer's hands. But with automated testing, CI pipelines and automated deployments this bottleneck is being reduced.

Once you have solved your releasing problem your backlog build up will shift to another part of your process. Then you can continue the game of whack-a-mole fixing issues and moving on to the next one. Ultimately though your process should keep getting faster and faster.

This Weeks Updates

Enabling the Team

Process by Fabricio Teixeira, Caio Braga
The team behind UX Collective are gathering some key learnings in a series of posts. This one is around the good and bad of process.

Why We Need Another Agile Framework by Rory Madden
Frameworks should help companies to adopt good processes. But they’re not working. Even with all of the frameworks on the market, 90% of features fail to deliver the expected value.

Product Direction

The Adjacent Growth Strategy by Ant Murphy
Growing into adjacent markets can be a great tactic to leverage particularly if you start small and focus on one core area.

3 Key Parts Of An Effective Product Vision by Sachin Rekhi
You need an aspirational problem, a detailed and opinionated solution and a user-centric resolution.

Continuous Discovery

FAANG UX Case Study: Our Story And 5 Tips For You by Yutong Xue
Yutong was a student and didn't know how to land that first job so she did the work as if she had the job and then submitted it to Airbnb.

Presenting UX Research And Design To Stakeholders by Victor Yocco
Victor covers how UX practitioners can harness the power of persuasion when presenting research findings and design concepts to key stakeholders.

Continuous Design

The Psychology Of Deceptive Discounting In UX by Anna Rátkai
In the world of fast fashion they use overwhelming and confusing discounting strategies purposefully to maximize impulse purchases.

Designer Engagement Report by Matej Latin
751 designers share their thoughts on the biggest problems they face, the relationship between designers and managers and more.

Continuous Delivery

Not Just Scale by Marc Brooker
There is a backlash against cloud computing due to excessive costs. But the cost of compute is just one metric that should be used to compare cloud computing.

htmx: Simplicity in an Age of Complicated Solutions by Erik Heemskerk
In an age of complicated front-end solutions, is there a simpler way of doing things? Spoiler alert: there is.

EMEA Tickets🚨

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FREE COMMUNITY EVENTS 

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New Video Released This Week

Join Martin Reilly, Senior Product Designer at Toast, as he explores product development in uncertain markets, focusing on agile methodologies and antifragility principles. He discusses strategies for innovation, avoiding common pitfalls, and balancing risk with adaptability. The talk highlights successful examples and emphasizes agility and simplicity for resilience in product design. 👇👇

Job of the Week

Product Designer
Toast
📌 Hybrid

About Toast
Toast builds a platform to help restaurants adapt and thrive by creating user-centric products. They seek a UX Product Designer to craft exceptional user experiences and collaborate on intuitive, accessible marketing tools.

See role details here

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question was: Does your process vision actually help you to prioritise initiatives?

68% of people say that they do not have a vision that can help to prioritise changes to how they work.

Without something tangible that teams can refer to, improvements are often implemented based on the squeaky wheel principle rather than where they are needed most. And like with product development where we accrue tech debt over time, an unstructured approach to changing our processes leads to process debt - inefficient and ineffective ways of working.

For the 32% with effective product visions, I’d love to hear from you. If you’re willing to share more about how you work then please get in touch by replying to this email. I look forward to chatting more.