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Archives for October 2019

The 2020 Guide to Planning New Products using Story Points

October 30, 2019 by LaunchTomorrow Leave a Comment

Due to his glasses, Michael’s estimate of Jane’s distance from him is 14.3% further away than she actually is–at any given moment. How would you describe his estimate?

Precise, but not accurate.

Wait, what’s the difference between the two again?

Precise means the numbers you are seeing are repeatable. Often down to multiple digits after the decimal point. You can be pretty confident that when you do the experiment again, you’ll get the same result.

But that’s not necessarily true with an accurate result. An accurate result is one that is close to the actual value. For Michael’s scale to be accurate but not precise, it would be producing numbers close to the actual value, but not the same number each time. In estimating knowledge work, accuracy bests precision.

Your riskiest assumptions are probably related to your prospects and customers. Establish empathy quickly with your target prospect, figure out what's valuable, and get your innovation into the market.

Filed Under: velocity

4 approaches to track your assumptions, when starting to work on a new business idea

October 23, 2019 by LaunchTomorrow 1 Comment

In The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses, Amar Bhide reported that 2/3 of the Inc 500 company founders he interviews pivoted away from their original concept:
More that one third of the Inc 500 founders we interviewed significantly altered their initial concepts, and another third reported moderate changes.
In other words, it’s best to assume that you will be wrong about something when launching a new product, and make sure you have the option to pivot. Usually this happens once you collect data or information that challenges your assumptions.
In practice, assumptions are beliefs that you have which must be true for your new business venture to work. Usually, when you are starting out you make hundreds of assumptions, simply to get going. To start making progress despite the uncertainty.

Identifying the riskiest assumptions is an excellent use of your time up front. Much better than building technology (which is where almost everyone wants to start). All that said, it doesn’t really matter how you keep track of this or think about it. Just that you actually do it.

Economic impact of risk factors

In How to Measure Anything, Douglass Hubbard analyzed variables that had potential economic impact on the success of an IT project in established companies. By economic impact, these are random occurrences which could happen with significant negative variability. They would be realized as an unexpected cost. These risk factors included things like: initial development costs, adoption rate, productivity improvement, revenue growth and so on.

Filed Under: metrics

How to choose a useful measure of incremental progress for your team

October 16, 2019 by LaunchTomorrow 1 Comment

Recently I had an interesting call with a senior QA leader. He reached out to me He wanted to get a better sense of how his people are doing, both as a functional unit and individually. Primarily, I suspect he wanted to be proactive, and have some kind of a numerical early warning system in place, which he could cross-reference with common sense and qualitative input he got elsewhere.

As we spoke, he kept using the term “velocity” initially; however, it became clear that he meant velocity in a much looser sense than the typical iterative scrum/agile sense. It doesn’t really work for what he wanted to achieve.

Here’s what I mean:

Filed Under: metrics, velocity

Why estimating cognitive effort simplifies knowledge work

October 9, 2019 by LaunchTomorrow Leave a Comment

“There were only an estimated two to five thousand humans alive in Africa sixty thousand years ago. We were literally a species on the brink of extinction! And some scientists believe (from studies of carbon-dated cave art, archaeological sites, and human skeletons) that the group that crossed the Red Sea to begin the great migration was a mere one hundred fifty. Only the most innovative survived, carrying with them problem-solving traits that would eventually give rise to our incredible imagination and creativity.” –Marc Sisson

Imagination fed into our uniquely human ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers. So fast forward to today. Our most valuable and exciting work, particularly in the context of innovation, still relies on our ability to imagine what needs to be done, start, and continuously course correct.

Filed Under: velocity

How to simplify a complicated process, so that even a 2.5 year old would understand it

October 2, 2019 by LaunchTomorrow Leave a Comment

A few years ago, we had a significant challenge with our 2 year old daughter. Morning and evening routines were an uphill battle every day. Getting out the door to her childminder quickly enough to make my first meeting in the morning was often a drawn out battle of wills.

It was clear she wanted to collaborate and appease us as parents. But she didn’t understand what we expected of her. Moreover, her brain development still seemed to behind. The neocortex doesn’t kick into overdrive growth until later. She was also awash hormones, which is completely normal for this age. This caused the temper tantrums typical for a two year year old. They’re called “terrible twos” for a reason. We were also frustrated as parents, and we didn’t know how to help her. Fundamentally, this was an issue of her feeling overwhelmed. And unable to sort out what’s important from what isn’t.

In a professional context, visualization works really well to help stop overwhelm. Whether to map out a business process, plan a large scale software system, or figure out a business model, it helps to have everyone involved “brain dump” onto post-its. And then to organize them. This approach unleashes a lot of latent creativity. Plus it helps front-load difficult discussions. You find out really quickly what the major challenges are with a new initiative.

Filed Under: case study, stories, tools for founders, vizualization Tagged With: eventstorm, lean value stream map, personal story

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    Luke Szyrmer is an innovation and remote work expert. He’s the bestselling author of #1 bestseller Launch Tomorrow. He mentors early stage tech founders and innovators in established companies. Read More…

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