I dare not go back

On the danger of escalation of commitment

The start of a success story. A job to be proud of. It would be. As Product Owner , I start with several interactive sessions with stakeholders from the organization. Soon we have all the requirements listed and we set priorities. The energy is good, so on to the next step. This energy, this drive, it’s so contagious,” I think to myself. The design team seems to feel it too! They go to work on the concept design with all their might. A first simple elaboration, as agreed upon, so they can add some ‘magic’ later. With the goals and metrics clear, we keep it safe, so that we can color outside the lines later. Everything according to plan.

I love it when a plan comes together

I would have loved to have said it so convincingly, that statement by a certain Hannibal Smith of The A-team. But in this series, we didn’t really turn out to be an A-team. The energy I felt at the start of the project slowly turns to doubt. Something begins to gnaw. At one point I even hear myself saying out loud, “Marieke, come on. Your stakeholders from the organization are satisfied, your team is working nicely, the developers are even on their way fine. What could possibly go wrong?” Well, something very important went wrong. Something so obvious that it’s easy to overlook. Does it ring any bells?

And then suddenly you don’t dare go back

To be straightforward, I had simply passed the end users by. Because the team was on fire right from the start and the stakeholders knew what they wanted, the end users disappeared into the blind spot. While those are exactly the people we were creating the app for. Not for the management and stakeholders, not for the designers, not for the developers, not for myself … but for the end users. Oeff! ‘Well Marieke, what do you do now? Involve the end users now? Suppose they don’t like it at all? Then we can start all over again. Yes, I fell for it: Escalation of commitment. The more we invest in an idea, the more committed we are to that idea. Yep, I plead guilty.

The bold

After that realization, I knew. ‘This time I do have to go back. I can learn something from this’. And so I put my nerves aside, put on the bold shoes and scheduled a customer survey. The moment of truth. Yes, that’s incredibly exciting. Yes, sometimes you have to bare your bottom. And yes, as in our case, sometimes you have to go all the way back to the drawing board. That doesn’t feel good. So why should you always do it and why is it never too late for a customer survey? Because it is incredibly valuable to know what the end user wants from your product or service. And you often don’t know exactly that yourself (but think you do). So even if you’ve already got off to a flying start, in the end you want to make a real impact with a product the end user can use. Isn’t that more important at all times than being satisfied with your team’s process and methods?

Know first, then surprise

Since then, I have made it my own – as Product Owner – to be extra keen on this in every project. By means of customer profiles, customer surveys, customer journeys and collecting even more data, you find out what is really going on. If you don’t, you can rather easily fall into the trap of filling in yourself what the end user wants. And of course it’s quite exciting to admit that you don’t know exactly what your customers want. But that is very strong! It shows that you really want to make an impact and not just deliver a prestige project. By first getting to know everything about your client, by drawing the lines, you can always color outside those lines afterwards to surprise the client.

Ask the riskiest questions!

I coached a team of Product Owners last year. One part was working on a new customer portal. I had them work out assumptions they had made as based on which they thought the portal would be a success. This was in preparation for a customer survey. In proposing the survey, they left out the riskiest questions. “Why don’t you ask those questions?”, I asked. “Because otherwise we will have done a lot of work for nothing. Then we can start all over again!” was the unanimous answer. “The sooner you find out, the better right?”, I said. And to close with a classic quote: one becomes wise by trial and error.

Do you recognize yourself or your team in this story and are you curious what concrete steps you can take with training or coaching from Scrum Academy? Please contact us and together we will see what suits you best.