Jugaad Product Development

Any business leader will tell you that regular product development takes too long. Setting hard deadlines rarely works.

Regular product development involves a lot of necessary tasks such as spec writing, solution design, coding, code reviews, different types of testing, etc. They take time and partly as a result, the backlog of things to be done keeps growing.

Your business stakeholders might not want to hear that they should limit work-in-progress, or that they should not be saying yes to everything that customers ask for. You might also not be in a position to show them the mirror—to show them that most of what they ask for rarely has the desired benefit or impact. They might not be ready for Business Impact Retrospectives.

What can you do as a technology leader in this situation?

Do More

Your regular product development team is a bottleneck in this context. One way to alleviate it is to spin up another, smaller team that does product development differently.

Assign a competent analyst to comb through the backlog to see what requests can be satisfied with lightweight solutions such as browser plugins, AutoHotKey (or Automator/AppleScript) scripts. or with a bit of Google apps script or MS office script that consumes your regular API if needed.

Usually, a fair amount of internal-use functionality will be addressable in this manner, called Jugaad.

Note: If you have an Indian CTO or CPO, they might not like "Jugaad" because it sometimes has negative connotations in India. Pitch it as "Bricolage Product Development" instead. They are terms from two different cultures, yet both encapsulate a spirit of resourcefulness and ingenuity in problem-solving, often in the face of resource constraints.

Make it Coexist

Adopt Jugaad Product Development in addition to regular product development. Set up a Jugaad team that’s 10% of the size of your regular product development team. Staff it with developers with analysis and communication skills or with analysts with coding skills. They also need to be comfortable with providing on-demand support. Don’t worry that they might not be familiar with the lightweight tech stack mentioned above. If they know any tech stack at all, they’ll usually find their way in a month. In addition, you could equip them with chatGPT/CoPilot and with guidelines on how to use it without sharing sensitive or private information.

Set up Jugaad Governance

If you have a demand management team or a team of business relationship managers, advise them of this new arrangement. They must now loop in a Jugaad representative along with the regular product development representative to agree, based on the guidelines below, where a piece of functionality will be developed.

Come up with guidelines for what functionality may be developed in the above manner under what conditions. No Jugaad data storage, for example. Agree on a much lighter development life cycle for it. As the functionality evolves and grows in complexity, it might become necessary to migrate it to the core product owned by the regular product development team. Come up with guidelines for this scenario as well. When to migrate, when to keep going in Jugaad mode, and when to retire. It usually takes several months to get to the stage where such a decision is required. By then, the functionality would have demonstrated its worth in Jugaad mode.

Enjoy the Positive Side Effects

Jugaad functionality that's under regular use and evolution becomes a validated requirement for regular product development down the line. Otherwise, requirements are just unacknowledged hypotheses. Mature Jugaad functionality will have already benefited from real-world iterations. You can now safely prioritize it for regular product development.

In this way, Jugaad development serves as a lab for creating working Hi-fi prototypes on a Lo-fi tech stack. These prototypes will often expose gaps in expectations or understanding that would have cost you a lot more effort to rework with regular product development.

Rotate the Team

Not everyone will sign up to be part of a Jugaad team. They might have different motivations. The tinkerers in your teams might be more willing than the others. Those driven by a sense of purpose and connectedness (with business teams) will be more likely to sign up for it than those driven by autonomy or mastery. Identify them and set up a rota. Four months in Jugaad mode for every eight months in regular mode, for example.

Show Off a Bit

When it is set all up and rolling, start a monthly Jugaad impact retrospective and invite your Jugaad and regular product development team to it along with the business beneficiaries of Jugaad. In the retrospective, have business stakeholders vouch for the impact of Jugaad solutions. Have the Jugaad developers talk about their experience of delivering value quickly. You might find more people willing to try it out.

Think L1, L2 support

If Jugaad product development sounds strange, think of it in terms of how support work is organized. Your L1 support teams have some jugaad-like actions at their disposal. They escalate to L2 only if they can’t handle it. I’m not suggesting that sequence but the arrangement is similar. Based on the guidelines, new requirements are channeled into your L1 (Jugaad) or L2 (regular) development teams.

Pre-empt DIY

Managed Jugaad development is better than do-it-yourself (DIY) development wherein business stakeholders hire their own Jugaad developers to run a bit of DIY shadow IT on the side. That is not under your control and it won’t be subject to your guidelines. You? might think you have nothing to do with it but it usually creates problems down the line, like when you want to modernize your systems.

If you as a technology leader don’t set up Jugaad development for your business stakeholders, they might get the DIY idea sooner or later. They won’t wait forever for your regular product development team to fulfill their requirements. This is all the more feasible today with generative AI to lend a helping hand to their shadow DIY developers.

Be smart and pre-empt the DIY goblin.

Feel the Love

Jugaad functionality can usually be delivered into the hands of the user much faster than regular functionality. If you do it right, you will alleviate at least some of the pressure on your regular product development and will also win you brownie points with the business. Your business stakeholders are likely to love Jugaad functionality when it comes with on-demand support.

Make them see it as a potent painkiller. Since you are in control, you can make sure you only prescribe small doses.

Until next time, take care and prosper.

Sriram

agileorgdesign.com

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