Go Deep, Not Wide

Given our economic state of affairs due to the impacts of COVID-19 on businesses, many companies are struggling to find ways to do more, with less. Whether that means budget reductions or staffing cuts, during these challenging times, we as technology leaders need to find ways to go on the offense, rather than just playing defense.

One key to moving to offense is the concept of going deep, rather than wide. This is really a concept rooted in Agile methodologies, and I'd like you to consider the impact of how organizing work and focusing on only a few efforts at a time can lead to a material impact on the delivery of work.

Consider four projects that need to be accomplished by your team. Each of the projects takes a total of three weeks of effort to complete. If you stripe those efforts, working on all of them at a time (e.g. one week of project one, one week of project two) so that you are balancing efforts across all projects simultaneously, after twelve weeks, the four projects have been delivered. Great! You hit your target, and came in on time for your projected delivery. In total, these four projects have had a collective available / live time of six weeks. In the graphic below, you'll see that Project Green has been available for three weeks, Project Navy for two weeks, and Project Grey for one week by the time the twelfth week rolls around.

Now, consider prioritizing these activities differently, where your team only works on one project at a time. After twelve weeks, four projects have been delivered - exactly the same in the previous example. However, you receive a collective eighteen weeks of available / live time - three times as much as trying to do all of the projects at once.

While it feels great to be serving all of your clients at the same level of service, how would it feel to significantly improve the overall delivery of work for your company? Imagine the additional value achieved by delivering quickly and delivering sooner. Whether it's time to market that you measure, or revenue from a delivered product or service, time to value is critical. It's important to stack rank your priorities and focus on the most impactful items first. Doing so can help you optimize delivery and value, and create the ability to do more with less. As you consider how your prioritize your work, think about the additional value you can deliver if you say "Not Yet" and "Go Deep, Not Wide."