Managment Talks: Iterate

So how exactly do you iterate? Iterating is another way of saying “working in increments.” When you iterate, you find a process that, repeated, will help you achieve your desired goal. The results of one iteration will be your starting point for the next iteration. 1. Plan your iterations. Start by chunking down your projects into customer facing increments - things that you’re building directly for your customers (releasing new features, design, user interface, etc.). You can further break down your work into team facing increments - work that will stay within your team and not be released (at least initially) to the customers. 2. Start with your first iteration: Build. Measure. Learn. Begin working on your first iteration. Here you can use the “build, measure, learn” methodology. This method is all about working in cyclical increments, all while focusing on feedback. So instead of working in a vacuum, without understanding how your product is affecting your customers (or even if it is wanted to begin with!), you are releasing often, analyzing the results and learning from them. 3. Begin building again. Iterations are all about moving quickly and adjusting to what you learn. So as soon as you have drawn conclusions from the first iteration, you go back to the beginning of the cycle, and start building again on your second iteration. Working in increments also helps you adapt to changing priorities. When you work in increments, you are able to stay flexible and change course if something doesn’t work as planned. The more you work on a project, the more you know. The benefits of working in iterations Some iterations are customer-facing, or geared directly at people who use or buy your product, others aren’t. When you’re working in iterations, you have the ability to release often so that your customers get value from what you’ve created so far very quickly. You also get feedback more often and can adjust to that. This way, you don’t waste time working toward something that your customer doesn’t want. Also, you can test out an idea you’re not sure about by creating the minimum viable product and getting feedback on it before you make a commitment. Zappos - initially, they started a website that allowed people to order shoes online. But they didn’t have any shoe inventory. The two founders would simply go to the mall, buy the shoes, and ship them to the customers. Of course this isn’t a feasible long-term business, but it is a quick and easy way to evaluate customer interest before putting in all your marbles. This kind of iterations allowed them to quickly achieve their company goals. Zappos reached the $1 billion yearly sales goal two years earlier than expected, and they were eventually bought out by Amazon. On the opposite spectrum is BlackBerry. Although there was a great market demand for touch screen devices, BlackBerry did not pay attention to what customers wanted. Lack of response to feedback caused them to lose a lot - until they eventually did do touch screen. The 30% feedback method Even when your iterations are not customer-facing, you still get lots of benefits from working in increments. For one, you can apply the 30% feedback method. This method encourages feedback from team members when projects are 30% completed, as opposed to, say, 80%, so that you avoid the projects going completely off target. The beginning of the project often moves faster than the last stretch, so you can take advantage of that and make sure you’re on the right course before investing too much time perfecting your project. Imagine you’re working on a project and you’re doing the best you can. Actually, you’re doing pretty darn good, but what you’re doing is completely besides the point. You’re simply working on the wrong thing. Wouldn’t you want to know that you’re going in the wrong direction as soon as possible? Combined, the "build, measure, learn" and the 30% feedback methods can help you power up your iterations.