One Good Goal Plus Options

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Ref aphorism - “more than the minimal number of moving pieces is bad”

What is the minimal amount of product work required for good developer utilization?

I propose: One Good Goal Plus Options.

“One good goal” - we have at least one thing we know is valuable. What does “Thing is valuable” mean? We have done sufficient work on business risk, usability risk and value risk to know that this makes sense.

“Plus Options” - set expectations that devs not spend 100 % of their time chasing the single goal. Rather - enable optionality.

Optionality requires:

• sufficient Slack for the developer
• knowledge of other (more fuzzy) goals
  • either dev-driven - “this is useful”
  • or other-driven “hey, what about this idea. Any takers?”