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“directors are allowed to spend years in the development phase of a movie,” noted Ed Catmull, a co-founder of Pixar. There is a cost associated with exploring ideas, writing scripts, storyboarding images, and doing it all over and over again. But “the costs of iterations are relatively low.”28 And all that good work produces a rich, detailed, tested, and proven plan.
How Big Things Get Done
Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner
There are two tools that should be in every product team’s toolbox—unmoderated user testing and one-question surveys. Unmoderated user-testing services allow you to post a stimulus (e.g., a prototype) and define tasks to complete and questions to answer. Participants then complete the tasks and answer the questions on their own time. You get a video of their work. These types of tools are game changers. Instead of having to recruit 10 participants and run the sessions yourself, you can post your task, go home for the night, and come back the next day to a set of videos ready for you to watch.
Continuous Discovery Habits
Teresa Torres
The kernel of a strategy contains three elements: 1. A diagnosis that defines or explains the nature of the challenge. A good diagnosis simplifies the often overwhelming complexity of reality by identifying certain aspects of the situation as critical. 2. A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge. This is an overall approach chosen to cope with or overcome the obstacles identified in the diagnosis. 3. A set of coherent actions that are designed to carry out the guiding policy. These are steps that are coordinated with one another to work together in accomplishing the guiding policy.
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy
Richard Rumelt
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