Most people who work in technology have a desire to innovate. What does this mean? The dictionary definition of innovation is a new method, idea, product. I think what people typically mean is that they want the opportunity to be more creative in how they are using technology to build impactful solutions.
When asked to define innovation people often talk about the need to see a compelling product vision and strategy. Whilst having a long term product vision is useful, I don't believe it is sufficient to satisfy the desire of individuals to innovate. This is partly because the product vision is an abstract concept for most people in the organization. Assume your employer articulates a clear product vision to build a base on the moon in five years time. You might think that you are working for an ambitious organization with a grand product vision. However, if your job is to test the quality of some hardware widget that will eventually be deployed on the moon base, what is it about the overall vision that enables you or your team to be innovative?
The trick is to frame innovation in the context of the work you do. Innovation isn’t about looking to others to give you something. Innovation is about thinking about your area of responsibility within the organization and coming up with a new method, idea or product that drives better outcomes. Innovation is everyone’s job and you don’t need to wait for anything to be innovative.
When people talk about innovation there is a tendency to focus on the latest cool technology in the public eye. At this point in time, there is a particular cache associated with working in the fields of autonomous vehicles, space projects and generative AI like ChatGPT. However, rather than focusing on innovation happening outside, you should frame innovation in terms of what you are working on inside your organization. For example, a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) responsible for uptime can innovate by implementing a particularly resilient architecture that adds another 9 to the availability metric. An engineer can find a way to handle requests more efficiently, reducing CPU and memory and therefore reducing the size of the fleet required to handle these requests.
Innovative organizations are simply collections of innovation that happen frequently across the organization rather than being a top down directive. If individuals and teams understand what success looks like, preferably measured by a metric, then they can ideate and experiment with ways in which to leap ahead. A culture of innovation is created by sharing and celebrating positive results driven by innovations publicly across the organization.
Driving innovation through the product roadmap
Broadly speaking there are two types of initiative on the product roadmap - 1. Enhancements. The products and features are typically minor or major enhancements to existing products. 2. New Products. These products or features represent significant changes in direction or differentiation from existing products. The technical solution might be unclear or present new risks and challenges to deliver. There are typically many unknowns associated with delivery of new products which add to timeline risk.
In any product organization, there should be a balance between feature enhancements and new product development. Often, new products are deliberately taken off the product roadmap in recognition that the standard rules and process do not apply due to the risks and unknowns. New products often require an incubation period that is different to the product delivery process for enhancements.
Often, engineering teams complain about a lack of time to dedicate to innovation. The pushback is that working on the product roadmap consumes more than 100% of the teams capacity. Engineers find it difficult to convince leaders to dedicate a fixed percentage of time to something as vague as 'innovation'. Google 10% time was an example. The compromise is often hackathons which result in projects that usually don’t make it onto the product roadmap.
Whilst risky solutions to new products should be started outside the product roadmap there is still a need to convince stakeholders that there is a real customer need. To gain investment and alignment to spend time on possible technical solutions, the same bar should be applied in terms of defining the customer pain point being addressed. The Press Release (PRFAQ) is the standard document that describes the customer problem and a possible product solution. Critically, anyone in the organization can write a PRFAQ to seek investment in new products, it isn’t solely the role of a Product Manager. Any engineer can write and present a PRFAQ.
The next step is to identify possible technical solutions and articulate the key risks that need to be addressed before moving forward. Projects for new products should start small with a proof of a concept that addresses the key risks. If the initiative starts small and shows promise at each stage then the organization will find time and resources to move it onto the official product roadmap.
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