Managing a Beast Implementation project
Amazingly you’ve got this great big idea and are ready to make it happen! Approval, resources, and time are set for you — and possibly your team — to move forward with the implementation! So far you have had your eyes fixated on the super-refined result but now it’s time to start building!
Let’s see the steps involved in the approach and the respecting mindset to develop.
Step 0: Intimidation/Realization
This is a time of realization: “This is so big and great, but where should I start? This seems well-rounded with no edges, I’m literally building everything or I’d better not start!!”
This is the beginning of every implementation. A feeling of intimidation looking at all the work that needs to be done! It is normal to feel intimidated and perplexed. This will happen on every big project you’ll work on in the future!
The important task at this point is to “just keep swimming” as Dory says. Don’t let the size of the work intimidate you to a halt, or rush you into taking everything all at once!
Keep reading!
Step 1: Fat parts definition
At this step, examine your project to identify the big parts that define it. To achieve that you will need the right mental model for your project to help you build that abstraction. Some examples are:
- If we’re talking about a software application, you can breakdown by different actions or user roles in that software application (e.g. “What would an admin need to do?”).
- If we’re talking about writing a book or a blog post, you can breakdown by chapters or key plot moments.
- If we’re talking about physical work — like building a garden, or woodwork — you can break down by the order of work needed to be done, e.g. get the ground ready, or buy some wood parts.
- and if you’re building a dragon, imagine her core body parts!
Remember to stick to the high-level, without worrying about the minute details of each of the parts you defined. These parts are the frame of the work you’re going to build everything on. When seen from a great distance, everyone can understand the “shape” and size of your project.
Step 2: Define the importance of each part
Now that the fat parts are defined, you can further analyze the importance of each one. Of course, all parts are important, but:
- What’s the purpose each part plays to the whole?
- Do you equally need all of the parts when you start building your project?
- Do you need to implement a bigger or smaller chunk of each part when starting to build?
To identify the importance of each part, you and your team need to examine each part’s functions a bit deeper. No need to overthink it just yet!
❗Please note, we haven’t started building ANYTHING yet❗We’re in the planning phase! A required phase before we invest effort into creating the actual work at hand (the dragon)! Don’t underestimate or ignore these steps as you will soon see their value!
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” — Abraham Lincoln
Step 3: Define the core journey
Now it’s time to define:
- What we’ll start working on. What are the most important small chunks of work that tell a (small) cohesive story?
- Why we should start working on these items. Are the small chunks we’ll work on important enough to enter a first round of feedback?
- What we expect to see once done working on these items. Essentially, how will that short story of the first point above work? How this learning from the first actual work feeds any of our upcoming work?
Answering the above we’ll end up with a group of smaller chunks of work. These chunks will come from various fat parts we defined in the previous steps. Since we’re working towards a specific story, these groups of smaller chunks define a working cycle for our project.
Checking the graph above you’ll notice a great similarity to the product backlog in the scrum. In a product backlog we add more definition — aka smaller well defined chunks of work — the closer we are to the top of the list and leave more abstract items at the bottom of the list — the bigger parts on our graph above.
This layout and analysis of the work are intentional and one you should look for! Essentially this simple graph means: “Focus on more definition around the work at hand. Leave upcoming tasks’ definition for later”. Working in smaller iterations allows you to adapt any incoming feedback to your upcoming work. This is the agile way of working. Read more:
- The principles of The Toyota Way. Toyota has been a pioneer in agile development
- On working in iterations (iterations, iterations)
Step 4: Define the next work & repeat
You and your team are now working on delivering a working cycle. The more you see the work at hand, the better equipped you are to define what comes next. Again, identify the smallest chunks of work that tell the next important small story of the whole.
The majority of your work is happening in this step. As you deliver a working cycle, you define the next important items to work on and start working on them. You will stay in this step, so long as your project can start offering value to the people using it.
It’s important to share your work with a wider audience the more you continue developing it! (Read the article mentioned above on iterations to grasp why sharing is important)
Step 5: Entering the maintenance and improvement phase
More often than not, your project will continue needing your attention and extra work. As you and more people start using it, you’ll identify more work and missing stuff to extend it. This work is going to be easier and more manageable provided you:
- Embrace what you’ve built already as important. There’s no need to roll back and delete everything to add that one thing. If such an effort is needed, then that little extra shouldn’t be added.
- Keep working in small work cycles as defined above, to optimize your work and outcome times.
- Once done, zoom out to see the bigger picture and set the right perspective on what you’ve just added. There is a chance the most recent addition fits well with other work already in the project that you haven’t thought of. Zoom out to see that relationship and link the two. Essentially, you iterate towards telling a single story for your whole project.
Recap & some thoughts
Well, that’s it. We’ve eaten the dragon! The steps we used are:
- Embrace the intimidation phase, don’t skip this, and don’t let it drive you!
- Define the fat parts of the work, going past your intimidation to start understanding the components. Use mental models as your guide at this stage!
- See what’s important on a high level, Don’t work on the minute details yet! Just the bare essentials needed for your project to get started.
- Start working focused on the first and most important story! When done, iterate with more people to get feedback!
- Keep working focused on the next most important story! Repeat this step until you build the majority of your project, but please keep sharing with more people!
- Keep improving on your project as new information comes in!
As you and your team navigate between steps, you’ll engage in different actions.
In steps zero up to step three, you’ll need to do more talking and planning than actually building.
As said before, it’s important to work through these steps together, as you’re building alignment on what you need to do. There are various approaches to making these steps work better for your team and the project at hand. We’ll examine some of these approaches in a post to follow.
It’s worth noting that the specific steps can become a black hole for your project — dragging everything down in definitions, remapping, “let’s think of it that way too…” —making you incapable of taking any action! The more you talk and plan, the more you identify corner cases and details that have the urge to keep talking about, entering an endless loop of analysis paralysis! PLEASE BE MINDFUL AND USE REMINDER MECHANISMS TO RESET TOWARD ACTION!
Steps four and up to five will always involve the same repetitive process regardless of the project you are working on.
I consider these steps a must-have for building any type of project, kitty to beast. The repetition involved means that you and your team can become masters in performing these steps. It also means that you can easier predict the effort and time needed to reach each step’s goal.
This post is part of a series of posts, inspired by my product management experience and my current job at Hack The Box. The whole series of approximately 5 posts was inspired by a lightning talk to the entire HTB team💚!
Here are all posts from the series:
