OGGPOW: A strategic framework for optionality

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DRAFT

One Good Goal plus Options and WIP

This page is a complete mess. You probably don’t want to read it unless you’re exceptionally curious. I’ll probably just have to rewrite it all, and put old stuff in a temporal index down below the fold.

List of problems with the current structure:

• I don’t know how to slot-in new commentary / improvements / etc.
• I also want an image.
• And the TOC is distracting.

Mess

2022-09-25: Right now, there’s three page types described:

1. reference to current good goal
2. one page per initiative option
3. one page per WIP description

As I work on play.teod.eu, I discover more types.

1. Remote reference. Purpose: define a concept / idea / person / place / artifact so that we can talk effectively about it.
2. Playlist. Form: temporally tagged list of pages. Example purpose: deliverable for a “what’s important” workshop. Example purpose: deliverable for product management work.

Second draft

Target audience: teams aiming for elite levels of trust and quality

Requirement: high levels of trust and quality is already established.

(I think? To be determined & tested. I’d love to try and see.)

Motivation & introduction

• Utility is Contextual. The purpose of structure is to serve utility in a context. Ref Static-dynamic interaction.
• Requirement: mutually high levels of trust, shared sense of quality and shared sense of aesthetics.
• A brief history of failed attempt leading up to OGGPOW
  • Note: it’s gradually becoming better.
  • My experience as a civil engineer: the inability to improve the process as we go.
    • Too static
  • My experience working in a startup (not Unicad): everything is moving, confusion reigns.
    • Too dynamic
  • My experience working in a big organization: Diluted intent, emphasis on legibility and reproducibility over value.
    • Actionable: reify intent for product decisions
    • Actionable: reify intent for process decisions

Preparing for OGGPOW: how organizational stability impacts trust & quality

Learning requires deep work.

One Good Goal

Requirement: there is always one good goal.

“Good”:

• Makes sense strategically
• Actionable
• Goal is specified as an outcome that’s beneficial for end users.

A Bucket of Options

Options are initiatives that we can choose to prioritize or grow.

A Bucket of WIP

Bugs

List of instances of UI friction, tied closely to context of friction & purpose of workflow.

IKI: a light tool for bottom-up attention design

In Unicad, we don’t want to waste our time. We’d rather work effectively with tools that enable thought than slow down for conformity and tool-driven workflows. We have made attempts to use Notion, Github and Miro for planning. Those attempts didn’t stick.

So we did what worked.

We used code when code was the proper tool for the job. We used text when code didn’t suffice.

The hourglass of IKI

Flexibility - Individuals create content with the tools they prefer.

Cohesion - One Knowledge Protocol (narrow waist)

Flexibility - Content can be read from any browser. Content can be indexed by anyone.

The hourglass of OGGPOW

Flexibility - Bucket of Options

Cohesion - One Good Goal (narrow waist)

Flexibility - Bucket of WIP

First draft

JOB TO BE DONE

Enable effective attention design for a product team solving hard technical problems.

TERMINOLOGY

WORK CATEGORIES

We group work into either:

1. A bucket of options
2. The current tactical goal
3. A bucket of WIP

EXAMPLE WORK STREAMS

Discovery work. Options -> OGG -> Options -> OGG.

Options

A MINIMAL TOOLKIT FOR OGGPOW

Options, OGG and WIP are documents.

Documents are protected HTML.

Documents have an URL.

OGG is a reference to an initiative. The initiative starts as an option. The team prioritizes one initiative at a time.

Initiative options can have dependencies (references).

Feasibility, viability, value and usability are tackled early in the initiative option phase, if possible. We can push an initiative option all the way to production under a feature flag. Or we can do technical feasibility work / technical prototyping under an initiative document.

OGGPOW in Unicad

I don’t like wasting my own time. I don’t like wasting other’s time. And I don’t like using tools that break my flow.

In Unicad, we haven’t committed heavily to any single traditional work management system. We’ve used Miro and Figma on and off, and Github has been a sort of constant.

OGGPOW DOESN’T REQUIRE THAT WE SPENT OUR TIME ON:

LOOK AT ALL THE THINGS I’M NOT DOING

1. sprint planning. Instead, initiative option curation is a continuous process, and we stay in sync about progress on One Good Goal.
2. trello. Options and WIP can be viewed as lists, or as lists of links. Trello can be used to implement OGGPOW, but is not required.
3. sprints. We orient our work around One Good Goal, not random time intervals.
4. backlog. We don’t blindly say “here’s a huge list of stuff we want to do”. Instead, we curate options and select a single priority.