Comments on: In order to grow, just say “No”

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By: Manuel Martin

Manuel Martin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:56:28 +0000

This is great insight Kiril. I have seen this scenario happen in startups but the same applies to larger companies even if they don't move as fast. It would seem that 'priority tweaking' could be an outcome of one of the iteration cycles but like you point it out in several cases it might be helpful to explicitly incorporated as a separate step. If everyone knows how and when it will happen it might contribute to strengthen the alignment of all the stakeholders (that sounds like a mouthful).

Regards,
-Manuel

By: phineasb

phineasb — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:30:14 +0000

Thanks james. Agree on the not now approach and the value in exploring. I have heard this described as changing altitude and will write about that tomorrow

By: James Reinhart

James Reinhart — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:40:39 +0000

The key for me as CEO is not necessarily about “no” but about “not now”. Great teams need to know that anything's possible, but in the context of the goal at hand it's not mission critical. Some of the best ideas come from “not now” discussions because the very nature of exploring a different route calls into question some of the assumptions about the current path.

You're driving in a car and someone says, “did we miss a turn?”. You don't say no. You say, let's go one more mile and if we're not there, we'll turn around and try plan b. The key is making sure you have directions (a clearly defined strategy) – otherwise you're just winging it and that just gets everybody lost and frustrated.

By: phineasb

phineasb — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:37:23 +0000

Thanks for that. Super helpful.

By: Kiril

Kiril — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:52:31 +0000

We tweak priorities constantly, and try to do a thorough re-order on at least a weekly basis. (just did one last night)

We have deleted things, even big things, from the pipeline. We actually dropped a whole line of development just as it was coming up to the top of the dev queue: specifically, building league management tools. That was especially hard, because we had an uber-influencer who we'd promised them to, and marketing concepts based on its existence, but we realized that (a) it wasn't core to our value proposition, and (b) the effort involved to be competitive in that product space was significant, and it would have been a long-term resource suck.

More often, though, things linger around the never-gonna-get-to-it part of the pipeline until it becomes obvious we have no intention of doing them.

By: Keith B. Nowak

Keith B. Nowak — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:49:54 +0000

Raking the cost of pursing a potentially new opportunity vs time lost on current initiatives is definitely a challenge. Forcing a ranking does help in terms of product development but I think the main challenge for me personally is accepting this ranking mentally. That is, saying “this is what we are working on now and we are going to crush these tasks first before getting on to other stuff”.

I think this discussion also includes the question of resources. It would be ideal to build a team that is sufficiently lean but also large enough to take on new tasks without taking too much of a hit on current stuff.

By: phineasb

phineasb — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:36:05 +0000

Is it fair to say you need to evaluate the impact of loss of focus on priorities you have already defined vs. the potential loss of opportunity in those yet to be defined? If so, I think the forced ranking exercise could be a good place to start.

By: phineasb

phineasb — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:35:12 +0000

I know you guys are crushing on the product development and think the forced ranking system is a great tool to drive meaningful “no's”
Do you re-evaluate the priorities on a regular basis as well and re-order the forced ranking from time to time in addition to adding to the pipeline? Also, do you ever delete items based on new information?

By: Keith B. Nowak

Keith B. Nowak — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:09:04 +0000

It is personally hard for me to say no because I feel like I am missing an opportunity. Since there are so many exciting possibilities out there and predicting success of anything (especially anything related to a startup) can be nearly impossible it is sometimes very hard to decide where to spend time and money. This is the ultimate balancing act though since the number of things a company can try is more or less fixed (time and money) but without exploring new things opportunities will be missed. Filtering through all the possibilities is certainly one thing I know I need to learn how to do better.

By: Kiril

Kiril — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:05:20 +0000

I find that absolute force-ranked priorities (and development queues) are a way to build "no" into the fabric of your product development. Any new input is always ranked against existing initiatives, bugs, scaling, etc.

It doesn't prevent you from strategic "mis-yesses", but it tends to make it easier to consider the relative value of new ideas as they go into the product pipeline.

Good stuff to think about.

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:31:35 +0000

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