Inception (Project startup) secret sauce
In my previous company I was tasked with writing (yet another) playbook that would prescriptively describe how we would magically quick-start a project using proprietary methods and techniques. This book was dutifully completed, it’s 5 sections carefully colour coded and illustrated. Several hundred copies printed and given to potential and existing clients.
Did it work? As a collection of workshop methodologies it was great, described at a high enough level to be consumable, but with enough detail be believable. However as a framework, it was difficult to defend. I’ve learned that sometimes (ok every time) the iteration, the double diamond or whatever model being used as a project methodology framework will bend, give unexpected outcomes, or sometimes need to be abandoned and re-designed quickly (sometimes a global pandemic occurs).
Since then I’ve read lots of companies inception playbooks (Thoughtworks, Cabinet office policy lab, IBM Design thinking, and many more) They tend to be more akin to cookbooks, where the methodology is presented as ‘when you are in this situation, try this scenario’. For me the final decision NEVER to write a guide again was a conversation with Harry Trimble, our head of design where he shared the British Red Cross design approach, which has open my eyes again.
What I like is that this approach is a description of intent, in other words here’s a loose methodology, use it as a guide, but you milage may differ.
The key component that’s needed, the Secret sauce if you will, is that you need a guide. You need a me, an expert in getting a team to begin working together in a high performance manner. Although I sit under a product manager umbrella and this is a good description of my skills, my experience of starting projects, and spinning up teams doesn’t have a title.
I apologise for the self-promotion nature of this post, but until agile projects accept flexible roles, begin behaving like lean startups, then I’ll have to pretend to be a researcher, business analyst, service designer, interface designer and product manager, and I’m not.
