In the previous articles we’ve talked about getting ready, getting ideas and assessing business value and feasibility scores. In this chapter we’re going to look at how to make a decision based on the work you’ve done.
There is an accompanying app with this and the previous chapter for which we can mail you an access code.
So, by now, you have a list of ideas and you’ve scored each of them on their business value and feasibility. But how do you choose what ideas to take to the next level? You can’t decide on either business value or feasibility, you have to consider both! The easiest way to accomplish this is to plot all ideas on a graph.
Plotting out business ideas or software features on a graph to help make choices is by no means a new concept. If you do a google search for “impact-effort matrix” you’ll get a bunch of suggestions for similar graphs. In this case you’ll plot the business value on the x-axis and the feasibility on the y-axis and divide the graph area in 4 equal rectangles. The ideas that end up in the top right, where both business value and feasibility are high, are the ones you want to focus on first. We call these the “Champions”: the solutions that will give you the most business value and the highest chance of a successful outcome.
The top-left area (high business value but low feasibility) is called “Research cases”. These are the high-risk, high-reward ideas and you should be careful with choosing any of these ideas. You can continue with one or two of them but do monitor the budget very closely and try to focus on getting the feasibility higher. It’s also a good idea to follow up on these ideas in a year or two, the feasibility score might have shifted due to technological innovations.
At the bottom-right, there are the “Incremental improvements”. Those are the ideas with low business value and high feasibility. You can consider implementing one or two of these ideas as long as their cost can be kept extremely low. Still be careful, you don’t want to spend too much of your bandwidth on things that don’t bring business value.
Finally, the last quadrant at the bottom-left, are the ideas to “Reassess later”. There’s really no point in spending more time on them now. But don’t forget about them, the market or the technical capabilities might change in the future and these ideas might still end up in the “Champions” quadrant.
Idea maturity
In the previous chapter we discussed how the maturity of an idea can be used to determine what you should do next with that idea. In this chapter we’ll combine that maturity level with the matrix we discussed above. This leads to a single plan, to follow up on ideas and when to turn them into projects.
Here’s a short reminder of the 5 maturity levels:
As long as the self-experimentation isn’t done (so levels 1 and 2), you should not prioritize work on those ideas - or exclude them - since you have an incomplete view on both business value and feasibility. Do the business analysis and self-experimentation anyway. Especially since it doesn’t need to cost much to go through these phases.
Speaking of cost, it’s our vision that those people that propose the idea (or are most impacted by it) do the initial business analysis and self experimentation. When you’ve never done either though, this can be challenging. So provide those people with some support and keep a business analyst or a technical coach on hand.
Also set a time limit on both the business analysis and the self experimentation, this helps with keeping the budget under control and getting timely results. Let’s say that the business sponsor (the person who suggested the idea or wants to guide the idea to fruition) gets two times 5 days and the supporting business analyst and technical coach get 2 and 3 days respectively.
Once your idea has reached level 3 (self-experimentation done) you should make a selection of what idea to move forward with. Use the method discussed at the beginning of this chapter to set the priorities.
With a clear picture of the feasibility and business value and the champion ideas selected, it’s now time to go into project mode and start building a pilot!