Rethinking deadlines
Deadlines are for sure one topic that is guaranteed to spark debates amongst product people. You either love or loathe them, but they are an inescapable aspect of the job. However, could we look at them from another angle and transform these seemingly rigid timeframes into catalysts for creativity?
Deadline is a single world, but it can mean many, many things depending on the context and who you speak to. I have been hearing talking about deadlines as:
Delivery dates - ” We really need to hit that deadline to start communicating about the product"
Presentation milestones - ” We have a deadline to show our results"
A timebox approach - ” You have two weeks to look into that”
However, the crux of the matter lies in one important connection, the one of deadlines with commitment.
And here is where I believe the controversy begins.
Commitment, also known as knowing what you are going to launch and when it will happen, is a very controversial concept in Agile. It is not because we cannot communicate a date, but because the certainty and the commitment that comes from it, depends on the stage of the development and how much we know about what we are about to build.
Commitment, and especially high integrity ones, to use the words of Marty Cagan, requires that:
The discovery is done -we know there is a problem to solve that will create value for the users and the business. And we know how to solve it.
The scope and the tech-delivery plan are known - we know what we are going to build
We have the right capacity to work on it, and we can count on them
Only when these conditions are met we can have a reliable timeline for delivery. And a hypothesis on what will be the gain created from it.
But many times, deadlines are required in all the stages of development, and that is why the majority of people working in product, me included, are inclined to use them only when strictly necessary.
Yet, what if deadlines were not just commitment tools but could also serve as enhancers of creativity?
I recently watched this video about enhancing creativity where two fundamental concepts emerge: cultivating habits and confining the creative space.
The video suggests that problem-solving tends to expand to fill the time allocated to it (Parkinson’s law). Combine that with the anxiety created by a blank page, or a too-big set of possibilities, and you’ll get to the idea of confining our creative space to create better solutions. Precisely defining a problem and limiting the time available for its resolution is how we get the best creative results.
image courtesy of Hvp Mag
In the context of product development this would mean both specifying what we are focusing on (problem or solution) but also intentionally setting time constraints to limit possibilities and enhance creativity.
Note that I am not advocating for blindly set deadlines, but for the intentional use of time constraints throughout the process. The more I think about it, the more intrigued I am by this concept.
Deadlines, typically seen as necessary evils, may carry a fresh perspective as facilitators for creativity. After all, innovation flourishes with constraints.
Have you experimented with this approach, and what are your insights on its impact?
