Your team is divided on software priorities. How do you balance innovation and stability effectively?

Definitely need a dual perspective and need to take into consideration the current state of the software and not risk instability. An assessment of how important the feature is would also be prudent.

My take for Assessing needs: Imagine a software development team at a financial services company. The team is split between wanting to innovate by integrating AI features and ensuring the stability of the existing platform. To assess needs, the team conducts a thorough analysis of customer feedback, market trends, and internal performance metrics. They discover that while AI integration could significantly enhance user experience, there are also numerous stability issues affecting current users. This assessment helps in understanding that stability must be addressed first to retain the existing customer base while planning for future innovations.

Software stability and innovation goes long way to stay "relevant" for Users. If we have core functions working perfectly then we need to define roadmap and prioritize new features useful to business and stakeholders. For any core functions getting updated, we should always have back-up systems/plan B ready to not impact users and should have ability to fallback. In order to do it RIGHT first time, Automation and Testing is MUST. All stakeholders should be aware of the risk and by having open communication and discussing on trade-offs, balance can be achieved maximizing Win-Win situations.

My take for gathering inputs: Imagine a project manager at a healthcare software company hosts a series of workshops with key stakeholders, including developers, QA testers, customer support, and end-users. During these workshops, they gather diverse perspectives on the proposed AI-powered diagnostic tool and the current system’s performance. Input from customer support reveals that stability issues are causing significant customer dissatisfaction, while developers express excitement about the potential of AI. This input ensures that decision-making considers the needs and insights from all relevant parties.

My take for prioritizing wisely: Imagine a leadership team at an e-commerce platform uses a weighted scoring model to prioritize projects. They score potential initiatives based on factors such as customer impact, revenue potential, resource availability, and strategic alignment. Given the input and assessment, they decide to prioritize critical stability fixes that impact customer satisfaction and retention. Concurrently, they allocate a smaller, dedicated team to begin preliminary work on the innovative AI features, ensuring that both stability and innovation are addressed without compromising one for the other.

My take for managing risks: Let’s consider, In a logistics software company, the risk management team conducts a risk assessment for both the innovation and stability projects. They identify potential risks such as customer churn due to instability and market obsolescence due to lack of innovation. To mitigate these risks, they implement a phased rollout for stability updates, ensuring minimal disruption to users. For innovation, they run a pilot program with select customers to gather feedback and refine the AI features before a full-scale launch. This careful risk management helps balance the need for stability and the drive for innovation.