Half Baked Idea #3 - Doughn't go it alone
Lessons in agility from The Great British Bake Off
Intro
During bread week, the contestants were challenged with a centrepiece showstopper of plaited loaves.
Unfortunately, when presented with Cristy’s attempt, the judges didn’t see the “glory of the centrepiece” as she wasn’t quite able to bring her idea to life.
Her intended design was based on two plaited loaves, one smaller ring loaf nestled inside the larger one. But due to different proofing times and ingredients in each bake, the loaves didn’t fit together and she ended up having to present them as two separate bakes.
This prompted a thought about how products arrive in the hands of customers.
Sometimes a product manager writes requirements, a designer designs and an engineer codes. There are a lot of hand offs in that model which can lead to waste and longer lead times.
Marty Cagan would say “if you're only using engineers to code, you're only getting about 50% of their value”.
So what is the alternative? Enter the Product Trio.
“A product trio is typically comprised of a product manager, a designer, and an engineer. These are the three roles that—at a minimum—are required to create good digital products” - Teresa Torres
Over in the bake off tent, Cristy was trying to fulfil product requirements (the showstopper challenge), come up with the design (a fancy plaited loaf inside another larger plaited loaf) and be the engineer (by baking the loaves).
Her flavours might have been good, but the end result wasn’t what was expected and didn’t have the impact she was hoping for.
In the tent, the bakers aren’t generally allowed to help each other with their bakes. But we’ve often seen cases where folks have finished their own challenge and will run over to someone else’s bench in a last-minute rush to help them get something ready to present to the judges, even if it’s unfinished.
Whilst I can’t imagine that The Great British Bake Off producers will change their competition format to a collaborative model anytime soon, I can’t help but wonder what the results would be if the judges presented the challenges and the contestants were able to self organise around them and make sure they have all the expertise they need between them before they turn their ovens on.
The next time you’re starting a new piece of work, it can’t do any harm to ask:
Do we have everyone we need?
Have we considered the different risks?
Are we starting together?
By working collaboratively from beginning to end it can result in great products that have more impact.
Further reading and resources
https://www.producttalk.org/2021/05/product-trio/
https://www.producttalk.org/2015/01/run-experiments-before-you-write-code/