the tradeoffs of strategy


daily

Waterfall and Agile are loaded terms that mean different things to different people. A better mental model is strategy and implementation.

Strategy and implementation are like writing a book.

Very few people can sit down and plan a book cover to cover. The best ideas come from the writing itself. 

If you start without an outline, you will almost certainly come up with something creative - but it will take hundreds of discarded drafts to get there.

If you start with a detailed outline, you will almost certainly write a coherent story - but you’ll never know what interesting pivots you might have missed.

Most people have a sweet spot. Enough structure to inform the creative process without stifling it. But it depends on the person, the topic, and the timeline.

Strategy is the outline. Implementation is writing.

Using implementation to inform your strategy can lead to innovative ideas and new approaches to the overall objective. It’s also incredibly inefficient.

If you’re aware of this, you can use it to your advantage. When there is a clear need for defined outcomes, like in safety-critical software, keep your strategy and implementation mostly separate. If you’re searching for product-market fit, use implementation to generate new ideas.

There are tradeoffs in everything. Knowing what they are gives you an edge.

© 2024 Clark Teeple