Portfolio and Product Efficiency

How to learn Amplio

What is portfolio and product efficiency?

 

Mini Lessons

  • Quickest Valuable Releases (QVRs).  Article.
  • Objective stories tbd
  • Pareto vs Parkinson’s.  This is an old Net Objectives video where Mr. Shalloway introduced the concept during a consulting engagement. It is very useful when people believe they need everything delivered in the first release.
  • Stakeholders
  • Customer value streams.

Major Components

Value Driven Objectives (click for overview)

  • Aspects of design thinking
  • Aspects of jobs to be done

 

Value Driven Obectives

We must attend to the values, success criteria, and constraints of our critical stakeholders.

Our purpose should be creating value for our most important stakeholder’s consistent with their values, success criteria and constraints. This provides an overall view that enables alignment across the organization. Amplio follows much of Tom Gilb’s work on value.

Determining what to build goes beyond features and stories. It must start with understanding key stakeholders’ values, success criteria, and constraints, and then tie them into the objectives of what to build. This section integrates Tony Ulwick’s and Clayton Christensen’s Jobs To Be Done Approach with Tom Gilb’s Evo’s focus on stakeholders and quick value delivery.

See this conversations by Tom Gilb and Al Shalloway on critical stakeholder values and success criteria and what it takes to achieve success. A discussion about the importance of identifying critical stakeholders along with their values, success criteria and constraints will be a part of this. Get a copy of Super Secrets & Strategies for Efficient Value Delivery in Projects and Programs, and Plans.  Video.  Transcript.

The Jobs to be Done Framework is used to understand what someone is trying to accomplish in a given context – what “job” they are hiring a product, service, or action to do.

It focuses on the progress they seek, not just their stated needs or preferences.

By identifying these jobs, we can design solutions that align with real goals, not just surface-level requests.

It focuses on the progress they seek, not just their stated needs or preferences.

By identifying these jobs, we can design solutions that align with real goals, not just surface-level requests.

Jobs to be done Thinking is an integration of the Jobs to be Done Framework, design thinking, and modern product management.

You can learn more about the Jobs to be Done Framework as initially defined here.

The Perspective Shifts Of the Jobs to be Done Framework

One of the biggest strengths of the JTBD framework is how it has you look at what you’re creating for your customers differently.

  1. Demographics-> Context. Customers are defined by the situation they’re in when they “hire” a product to make progress.
  2. Features -> Progress. Products are tools customers hire to achieve progress toward a desired outcome.
  3. Wants and needs -> Outcomes. Customers define success in measurable outcomes—reduce time, minimize effort, increase certainty—bounded by constraints (money, time, rules).
  4. Competitors -> Alternatives.  “Competitors” are any alternative a customer might “hire”—including non-consumption.
  5. Solution first -> Problem discovery. Teams start with understanding customers’ jobs, then develop solutions.
  6. Transaction -> Ongoing value. Jobs are continuous value adds; products are re-hred or fired.
  7. User stories -> Job stories. When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [outcome].
  8. Inside out -> Outside in. Companies align to the customer’s frame of reference, designing back from the customer proress.

Amplio encompasses a full system for improving the creation of value. It is organized as five main components as shown. Click on area of interest.

Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a renowned method for innovation. Because Jobs to be Done Thinking already has users of it shifting their perspective to the customer, Design Thinking is naturally integrated into it. Design Thinking is also used to create a somewhat linear process to follow, which many people find easier to start with.

Human Centered Design

Human-Centered Design is based on Don Norman’s work in The Deign of Everyday Things. This is embedded in  Amplio’s Jobs to be Done Thinking. More will be added later, but for now you can use the Amplio GPT icon on the bottom right.

Amplio offers a learning journey on Jobs to be Done Thinking (click here to see that) as part of The Amplio Learning System and as a public workshop.

Attend to the cost of delay is the key for quick delivery of value. Amplio’s approach creates alignment about what is of greatest value to the stakeholders involved. Alignment is both more effective and less expensive than coordination.

Most organizations have difficulty coordinating working on the most important increments of value.  Coordination is much harder to achieve than alignment. Being able to sequence work is essential for this and requires the concept of the quickest valuable release (which is not the same as an MVP or SAFe’s MMF).