Converging the infinite universe
There are many ways to uncover opportunities in your infinite universe, but how you prioritise them might be unclear. In this post I’ll be focussing in on some of the ways to prioritise opportunities, find your Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and create an agile roadmap to the stars.
Divergent thinking activities
Before you prioritise, you need to complete divergent thinking activities. There are many ways to do this, here are a few: SWOT Analysis, Lego Play, Retrospectives, Heuristic Evaluations, Crazy 8s, Affinity Mapping, and Service Design Blueprinting to name a few.
I’m not going into too much depth on divergent thinking or collating ideas (as you can see). However, there are heaps of great books and articles if you need a bit more information.
Labelling your opportunities
After divergent thinking, you will have many unlabelled opportunities — you (and your collaborators) will need to label them. This can be done on large post-its, paper templates with tape, or on electronic tools like Miro. My favourite label is a Change Statement, but you can also use User Stories, Problems Statements, or Descriptive Titles.
Make the labels descriptive, but somewhat brief, as you might not address them for many years, but you also don’t want to spend many years writing them down. You might even want to put the name of the person that suggested the opportunity…just incase.
Example of a Change Statement:
“I want to change <descriptive what> in order to <descriptive benefit>” by Kristy Sachse
How many opportunities should you label?
How many opportunities you label is up to you — you might only want the top 10 or you might want all 500. If you do decide to cull, I recommend recording the abandoned ideas (photos are fine) for the following reasons:
They might come in handy later.
People will feel deflated if their ideas are discarded, and will be less likely to participate next time or limit their thinking if they do.
You don’t want to keep rehashing this process from scratch.
If you do need to complete infinite universe divergent thinking in the future, it is nice to reflect on what the collective thought last time.
Sort your opportunities
After your opportunities are labelled, you need to sort them. Create a canvas with a vertical line (urgency high to low) and a horizontal line (effort high to low). I like to sort opportunities that come from the infinite universe by urgency, as it is difficult to know the true impact of something until you’ve completed further research. However, if you’ve done more research, impact is also a great way to prioritise.
Next, randomly take an opportunity, read it out, then place it in the middle of the canvas. I do this because you won’t really know something’s effort/urgency level until you compare it to something else.
After that take another opportunity, read it out, and ask your workshop participants (maybe that’s just you) if the next opportunity is more or less urgent or effort than the previous opportunity. Place the new opportunity on the canvas in the appropriate space.
Continue doing this until all opportunities are sorted. You may need to shift opportunities that have previously been placed — that’s fine and actually expected.
Committing to your opportunities
Next divide the top half of your canvas in half horizontally. Opportunities in the top left are ‘Quick Wins’ and can be committed to immediately. Anything in the top right ‘Needs Slicing’ (so they can also become ‘Quick Wins’), but you could commit to these somewhat immediately. We call these Horizon One tasks and should be done now.
The opportunities in the lower half of the top quadrant can be labelled Horizon Two tasks and could be completed after all Horizon One tasks are completed. The opportunities in the lower quadrant are Horizon Three tasks and might be completed after all Horizon Two tasks are completed.
The opportunity in the top left of your top left quadrant could be your MVP, or first step in your roadmap. Put a circle around it.
Playback and audit
Now that you have a plan, it is time to get agreement. Ask your workshop participants if they agree with the plan? Discuss objections and make changes as required.
You now have a roadmap?
Warning: Roadmaps are tools to help you prioritise you work and keep track of where you are going. Roadmaps should be reviewed and adjusted regularly. What isn’t important now might be more important once new information surfaces. You might also uncover a new requirement, that is of higher urgency than something you already have. Keep your project’s roadmap organised but agile.
Slicing stories
Slicing an opportunity means, you have broken down the requirements to smaller, manageable functional units that will deliver value sooner. You might slice a large opportunity and put some requirements in Horizon Three, some in Horizon Two and another bit in Horizon One. When slicing make sure all opportunities are still urgent and adding value.
Here is an article on how to slice an opportunity.
Dependencies
Indicate dependancies with a dotted line and make a small, but descriptive note of what the dependency is. This will be useful when the freshness of your workshop is long gone.
Digitise your canvas
After the workshop is complete, digitise your canvas. You want to be able to change the roadmap regularly, but not lose sight of what your original plan was. I would even duplicating my canvas each time I make a major change, so that I can look back on my project’s journey or have the ability to go back if I lose my way.
Where my culled opportunities at?
If you did decide to cull some of the opportunities, add them to your canvas on the outer edges — photos are fine. They might not be useful now, but they might be useful later.
Iterate
You still need to do further discovery and/or slicing on each opportunity. Take your first MVP and do further divergent and convergent thinking. Rollout your change, measure if it is successful, adjust if it isn’t, kill it if it still isn’t. Then move onto your next MVP.
Systematically complete all of your opportunities, in a somewhat linear process, until all are completed. Remember to keep your roadmap organised but agile. A rigid roadmap can kill your universe.
Thank you. :)
