Rule 2: Know What You Intend to Do

Ground Rules for Rule 2:

• Each solution should solve only One Problem
• Each solution should be of only One Category
• Changing any constraint (time, cost, requirements) and expect the other two constraints to also change
• Each solution should be anchored to the problem with the word “by”
• A pilot gets you to the destination

Adding to our vocabulary…

What do we mean by intent?

An intent is a finite solution or group of solutions to documented problems.  The intent is time bound and has a finite cost/value, with a clear set of requirements that focus on solving the problem.

Examples of what an Intent is:

• Increase higher priced cellphone case sales by improving our e-store with a custom configurator…
• Improve customer communications by implementing an online customer community where they…
• Decrease operating costs by outsourcing design work to…

Examples of what an intent isn’t:

• Create a market differentiator
• Implement a feedback loop for customers
• Switch to buy from build

Giving Intent Purpose

How you intend to solve a problem can be categorized into one of three approaches: Driven by Business Measures, Fostering Innovation, or Solving a specific Customer Need.  Be careful to focus your solution to one of these three categories and not multiple categories.  This discipline ensures you are optimizing your solution toward the desired outcome and impact and will avoid diluting the value of the solution by inviting in too many cooks.  Choosing a single category also radically simplifies how you measure success.  Furthermore, you can narrow the requirements you need to only those that meet that categories success factors, increasing the depth of the realized value of the solution.

Intent Category – Traditional Business Measures

Solutions (intents) that leverage traditional business measures for justification are some of the easiest to measure. Does it make us a dollar or save us a dollar?

There are additional benefits to solutions that fit in this category, they tend to have a longer practical life assuming your core business model does not change.  As most companies have similar business measures and business challenges, there are often paths to buy the solution versus building a solution.  This results in a lower cost of maintenance.

But with these benefits comes some tradeoffs.  Because the solution is often bought instead of built, you may need to accept compromises in the requirements to better match the standard solution that someone else applied.  But therein lies another benefit, you can also learn from others who have applied this solution.

Be careful that you don’t combine solution categories here.  A common mistake for companies is to say, “I want to buy a solution and then customize it”.  The savings in time and effort that you gain from buying the solution will be offset in the costs of maintaining the customization.  Many companies amass a significant amount of technical and business process debt by customizing “Off the Shelf” solutions.  A better approach is to look at the vital nature of your business process that drives the requirement and evaluate adopting a standard process that would fit the purchased solution better.

Intent Category – Deep Customer Focus

Solutions that are driven by specific customer needs (external or internal) can be the most appealing.  We can produce exactly what we want with no compromise.  This can be the most effective (and most expensive) solution to implement and maintain because it is unique in nature.  This type of solution is often only applicable in one situation and suffers from low ability to be reused.

Though this solution has a shorter life (the customer changes their wants frequently), it can deliver very high customer satisfaction and loyalty.  When your choice is a 100% match to your needs, you create a highly addictive feedback loop where additional requirement sprout up during implementation.  Carefully manage expectations and requirements to ensure you reach the desired outcome.  Employ Agile style requirements backlog techniques to manage priorities and requirements in a changing world.

Intent Category – Delivering Innovation

There is a funny inverse that happens when driving innovation, people thinking working for large companies stifles innovation.  The inverse is that large companies are precisely the ones who can support the cost of innovation and provide that innovation a market to succeed.

Solutions that deliver innovation are solutions that solve a problem in a completely new way.  They are often authored to solve a unique business need, but unlike customer driven solutions, innovation can open new markets and opportunities. Innovative approaches are the best way to go if the solution will be used to differentiate you from your competitors.

Be mindful of the fact that you don’t always need to innovate to gain market.  Innovative solutions can be very expensive to develop and difficult to understand the cost to maintain because they have never been done before.

When done well innovation can foster your brand.  Poorly done, innovation can obscure your brand and lead you off your core mission.

Research if someone else has already solved the problem before you venture into innovative solutions.  If you cannot clearly articulate why an existing solution won’t work for you, the existing solution may be the best answer.  After all, it is free to benefit from someone else who has already experienced the pain and suffering of solving the problem.

Before You Decide What to Do, Understand What You Are Not Going to Do

Much like the mindsets that encompass the 5 Rules, it is important that you ask yourself key questions before implementing any solutions.  Money invested poorly can deteriorate support for future solutions.  Sometimes it is better to do nothing than to jump to a novel solution.

What happens if we do nothing?  What happens if we wait till later?

You need to clearly understand your threshold for the pain caused by the problem you are trying to solve.   Pain over a protracted period of time is suffering.  But if the pain is tolerable, protracted over a period of time the pain is simply annoying.

When weighing the costs of a solution, compare it with the cost or potential savings of deferring the solution to a later date.  Innovations in the market, shifts in customer wants, and advances in technology have a way of making problems less relevant at a later date.

What have you tried before?  Why are you not going to do that this time?

Ask a basic question when faced with a problem…Have we seen this problem before?  If you can answer that with “yes,” what did you do before?  Did it work?  Why aren’t you doing that again?

The more often you apply a solution to a problem, the strong that solution will get.  The fewer unique solutions you employ, the cheaper the cost of supporting those solutions.

What compromises would need to be made by doing another option?  Why are those compromises unacceptable?

When brainstorming through possible solutions, consider the unacceptable compromises that make a solution unacceptable. Keep a list of those compromises and weigh other solutions against that list.  Often you will find the unacceptable compromises may become insignificant when compared against the cost of doing nothing or implementing a more expensive solution.

“You can have it better, faster, or cheaper, choose two…”

It is an old saying that I heard the first time when discussing conducting a survey.  An internet search finds countless references to the same or similar sayings as principles you cannot overcome. The reality is, it may be a theorem that isn’t worth the cost of trying to overcome.

This theorem is a great way to slow a conversation and prioritize requirements of a solution.  Which two (Better, Faster, Cheaper) are most important?  How do we optimize that way?  Be careful of blending pieces of all three.  You simply set up a false narrative of expectations of success.

Let’s just do a pilot!

I think we can all remember a time when someone called for a pilot solution.  After much investment, the pilot either succeeded or failed.  Then nothing happened.

If the whole solution is too much, recommend a pilot with firm success criteria and support for the next step upon success.  A pilot should include pre-approval for the next actions to ensure sufficient funding exists for the solution to be completed.  Pilots without success criteria and approved next steps are work without purpose.  Pilots are often a way to overcome poor support for a pet project.  When someone offers a pilot as a next step, you need to understand the full commitment to getting to the solution.

Although the analogy is a little old, when offering a pilot do not commit to deliver a Cadillac for the price of a Yugo just to get a yes. Price the solution in terms of the problem and goal. Ask for the whole elephant, not just the first bite.

Don’t dilute your justification

When discussing the intent, explain why solving the problem is necessary

Remember, the problem justifies the solution.  Talk in terms of how the solution impacts and resolves the problem.  Don’t talk about what makes the solution unique.Talk about how it has the most direct impact on the problem.

Be confident the solution recommended is the right solution

If you have followed the process, the solution you ultimately recommend will be a viable solution.  You know the impact and justification for it.  You know what you won’t be doing and why.  Have confidence and stick with the solution.  Reinforce the confidence by discussing the impact.

Do not bundle problems into a single solution

This will seem counter intuitive to many.  The solution you intend to implement should be justified by how it solves a single problem.  Talking about other problems that it may solve will confuse what done looks like or confuse the justification for solving the problem in the first place.

Many times, people think that they should point out all of the additional “value” that the solution brings because it will help with other problems.  The additional value may be real, but the reason you choose a solution should be focused on the impact to the most important problem.  Do not dilute that value by discussing other problems that will benefit from the solution. It will only confuse the sponsors and make it look like you are trying to overly justifying a solution.

Revisiting the mindset

Now that you have had a high-level overview of Rule 2, it is important that we remember the mindset to have when applying the rules.  This mindset will help you achieve greater mastery of the rules.  These simplify the discussions, shorten the arguments, and illuminate a clear path forward.

• Talk in terms of the impact, not the solution
• Seriously consider doing nothing, that is always the starting state
• Be careful about taking too small a step, the end state needs to be perceived as reachable
• Evaluate what others have done in the face of this problem