Think before you act

When an urgent stakeholder request comes in (and they do—thick and fast), we usually respond in one of two ways:

1. All hands on deck: The entire organisation stops what they’re doing in pursuit of this latest urgent request, pivoting madly in the name of “Agile”.
2. Pile on the pressure: Another spinning plate (on fire) gets added to an existing workload of an individual because “They can handle it”.

But, are constant demands the real issue, or is it our all-in response, even when a nuanced approach is needed?

Misallocated efforts, not just demands, drive overage and slippage. Identifying the true necessity behind tasks can prevent unnecessary overkill:

• Problems or opportunities: Typically require greater input levels as they can be more ambiguous.
• Updates or best practices: They may need a hypothesis and a dash of common sense.

So, how should we respond?

Eisenhower Matrix

Establishing a decision-making framework is imperative to making unpredictability, uncertainty, and change our friend. And simplicity is the best policy for this.

An adapted Eisenhower Matrix (used commonly for task management, ie. urgency vs importance) ensures we approach in the most appropriate way:

1. Effort vs Benefit: Evaluate tasks for their true worth against resources required.
2. Cost vs Impact: Balance financial inputs against potential gains for roadmap and sprint planning.
3. Risk vs Clarity: Gauge customer understanding against potential challenges for feature launches or updates.

Product features

Now let’s put this into context of product development.

• High risk, low clarity: These items are ambiguous, so learning fast is a priority, eg. “We’re observing users creating workarounds for wishlist functionality, but we can’t guarantee this is something we should pursue.”
• High risk, high clarity: We tackle these items with greater effort and focus, eg. “We’ve validated users are crying out for wishlist functionality and, given the numbers and benefit, it makes commercial sense.”
• Low risk, low clarity: These items are extensions of a pre-validated concept and require less effort to validate further, eg. “The wishlist adoption is satisfactory and now we’d like to increase referral acquisition by making it shareable with anyone.”
• Low risk, high clarity: These items require a small amount of time and effort, eg. “We hypothesise that changing the wishlist icon will result in even more users adopting it.”

This approach not only streamlines operations but also curtails the ad-hoc requests causing friction. It’s about smart work, not just hard work.

So, next time a “Can you do this? It’ll only take a couple of days” request pops up, you’ll be equipped with a strategic approach, not just a to-do list.