Time to Value: Magic of Momentum

“The longer something takes, the less likely it is that you’re gonna finish it”

“Faster is better than slow”

I personally really hate slow - yep I said it out there. I love speed. Be it at work or otherwise. One of the main reasons why I prefer a road bike to an MTB (if you don’t get it forget about it). Or simply F1 to Rally. Great pace is motivation to do more within less time. Pace sticks you to your purpose and keeps you grounded to sustained value.

Speed to market (or time to market) is how quickly a business can go from conceiving a product to getting it to end customers. Every product has an optimal release time and being the first to meet it requires a flexible, agile, and resilient supply chain backed by the right logistics. When a business focuses on enhancing its speed to market, it taps into new potential to get products to market quickly when and where they are needed.

Let Customers Try It Early

You know what’s exciting? Doing something quickly and letting customers have it. Let customers try it early. Why? They are the true validators of your perceived value in what you build. Now - you want this to happen within the shortest time possible. The longer it takes (for whatever valid reason or excuse you wanna have - be honest with yourself on this) the less likely it is that you will finish it and ship out. The less likely it is that you’ll quickly validate all assumptions. The less likely it is that you’ll quickly pivot on what’s done wrongly to course correct. Don’t be deceived - it’s perceived/envisioned value and that has to conform to reality when it handshakes with the real users.

Real vs Perceived Value

As the product team you just ain’t the custodian of value - it’s perceived. It’s what you think should benefit the user. Well - does it? They are the kings and queens of determining that. So the longer it takes to get that judgement - the more you lose in between. Over roadmapping. Over designing. Over developing. Over testing. Over analyzing. Over consulting. Over reviewing. Why is one running 3 consecutive sprints without nothing shipping to Prod? The illusion of big bang scope launches is real - we want to “shock” the market/users with so much value at once. Could there be a sweet spot on quick incremental releases iteratively? Forming a feedback loop that ties to your backlog and more so the team’s ability to adapt, pivot, think, decide and ACT once again based on new insights? I dare say great momentum is better than perfection. This coming from the perfectionist that I am. The illusion of shipping a perfect product - if any exists anyway is just that - an illusion.

Don’t get me wrong - you’ve got to ship out functioning stuff that add clear value to the users. Don’t ship mediocrity in the name of speed. I have seen people put out really bad ugly features that can’t be used in the name of MVP to PoC a product. The balance is critical - don’t lose first time users with useless features that make it harder to bring them back at a later stage.

Google’s 3rd thing known to be true

I love how Google has one of the “10 things they know to be true” (a must read if you haven’t) as: “Fast is better than slow”. Yep - some of the best product guys at a global scale know that too well. Interesting right? Slow is boring. Slow is discouraging. Slow is demotivating.

One of the hindrances to great momentum is of course compliance - besides things like lazy culture and so on. How do you deliver great speed within the set boundaries of security, policies, data protection, customer privacy, regulations etc? The headache of product managers gets worse at this point as one tries to navigate all these moving parts while keeping the team on pace to ship the new scope to Prod as soon as possibles and to customers. I don’t have all the answers - check out my thoughts on stakeholder management on previous article. Can our colleagues from compliance or regulation be this lubricant to this great momentum?

Ask for forgiveness later?

One of my great inspirational leaders says ask for forgiveness later instead of seeking permission. Controversial for some schools of thought I know but why lie - some of the greatest innovations and advancement in product history didn’t get prior permissions. In fact policies and regulations have been formed afterwards to regulate some of these great innovations. Risk assessments have come in to adapt to an already flying rocket because one can’t stop an idea whose time has come.

Think. Decide. Act Quick

In whatever you do - are you contributing to great momentum to value or are you slowing it down? Ever wondered why a car has breaks? Yeah you probably think - so as to stop the car. Nope. It’s to give you the confidence to go faster because you know you can stop it if you need. Don’t be slow in your stuff - it’s boring. Time-box your tasks and stick within that. If a leader asks for an update - timebox it. You know how work expands to fill time allocated? Yep! Give smart updates. Momentum motivates teams and individuals more than you may know - don’t have a meeting to plan a meeting to discuss an email to set up another meeting to figure out the decision makers to explain to them what you are doing to decide blah blah blah (gosh ??). Our CEO says - Think. Decide. ACT. The difference is in execution, and more so faster execution.

N/B: These are my own personal views and do not represent any particular institution.