We get commitment in product development all wrong! Commitment is a critical aspect of achieving strategic goals, as Watts S Humphrey wrote on the elements of commitment.
When one person makes a pact with another and they both expect it to be kept, that is a commitment. Gerald Salancik defines commitment as the way to “sustain action in the face of difficulties.” In technical work there is rarely the comfort of familiar ground. Just about everything engineers and scientists do is a first of some kind. When people work together in this surprise environment, they must support each other; and this support must be based on a commitment discipline.
Often though, when we discuss commitment, we talk about delivery dates and deliverables. We Commit To Deliver. This comes from the simple business idea that if I spend X I should get Y by a certain date. Otherwise, I’ve wasted my money. It’s a transactional approach.
It is perfectly valid when buying milk from a shop, but doesn’t work for product development and software engineering. There are many problems business and product teams experience when they Commit to Deliver.
- Delivery dates become more important than the product. Teams deliver sub-optimal solutions to hit a deadline. Clients and customers aren’t happy, maybe we end up with Apple Maps.
- Critical information and risks are hidden from leadership in the rush to deliver. “Don’t mention the dodgy migration that must run every hour…” This harms expectation management and leads to future problems.
- The work is never complete once you deliver but a completion signal is sent to the organisation. Leadership assumes we can move on to the next priority.
- The crunch before a delivery date can seriously harm team morale, wellbeing and engagement. Too many crunches will degrade team performance over time as people burn out and leave the organisation.
There is a better way to succeed, instead, we can Commit to Persist! This means we will commit to regularly deliver product value until we achieve our strategic goal. This approach accepts some important principles.
- There are no hard deliverables. We accept with enough time and feedback our deliverables may change significantly or completely in pursuit of our strategic goals.
- There are no timelines. We accept that most strategic goals can only be achieved over a two to five-year period. We cannot guarantee when we will finish.
- Products are not bought, they are invested in. Investment comes with risk, we accept that risk and see it as a challenge to solve. Not something to be mitigated.
- Products are complex and humans are not good at calculating complexity. We accept estimates will be wrong, information is hidden, and detailed, accurate plans are impossible to produce beyond a short timeline.
Many leaders, business teams and stakeholders will find this approach difficult to accept. On paper, it is risky as there are no hard deliverables or detailed plans. However, hard deliverables and detailed plans are a comforting myth. Like a bedtime story we tell our children so they sleep well at night.
As the great Prussian General Helmuth Von Moltke (The Elder) said.
No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength.
We could reinterpret this in modern, non-militaristic terms as follows.
No Gantt chart extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with a complex problem.
Teams, organisations and leaders must accept this reality. Even if it doesn’t provide comfort and certainty. This doesn’t mean you can’t succeed and build great products in a timely fashion. Commit to Persist provides an alternate approach, with significant benefits.
- Teams can focus on product quality rather than deadlines. This will reduce tech debt, help the team move faster and improve client retention.
- Team wellbeing and engagement will improve. A less pressurised environment will reduce burnout and provide more time to solve complex problems. This will improve talent retention and domain knowledge retention, two significant costs.
- Better expectation management, communication and decisions. Teams will communicate estimates and problems openly and honestly. Leadership will be aware of the true cost of achieving strategic goals. This will empower them to make better decisions.
To Commit to Persist requires a great deal of trust. Leadership must trust their teams will persistently produce business value over a long period until strategic goals are achieved. They must accept there will be bumps in the road, there will be setbacks, mistakes will be made and things will go wrong. But with persistence, these challenges will be overcome.
It may be hard to accept but To Commit To Persist is the only way for product-led organisations to deliver great products and succeed.