Escape The Production Trap
First week back from the long holiday break and immediately we're drowning. The emails have piled up and the calendar is fully loaded. The backlog was prioritized, but still seems to have grown while everyone was away. Or maybe we just dreamt it had fewer stories than it does today.
Anyway, everyone has high hopes for Q1. Ambitious targets. Breakthrough results.
But, here you are - back at the same backlog, same meetings, same conversations. The same ways of working that delivered last year's results. Which, didn't exactly hit the mark.
Production Is A Mindset
It's tempting to just dig in. Start chipping away at those emails. Show up to those meetings. Work through the backlog one story at a time. It feels productive. Safe, even, addressing what's obvious.
And that's the problem.
Production never ends. There's always another fire to put out, another blocker to clear, another one-off request to accommodate. We can easily bury ourselves in execution because it's what has always been done. It's measurable progress. And for the moment, it feels safe.
In truth, while we're heads down in production, opportunity passes us by.
What You're Really Up Against
Leadership set ambitious targets. Now they're looking to you to make it happen. Teams are eager for change, clear direction, and alignment. Everyone's asking: what are we doing differently this year?
Most companies have a squeaky wheel approach to solutioning. The loudest stakeholder. The biggest fire. The most outrageous survey response. Then, institutional knowledge and gut instinct become the oil to ease the pain.
This isn't a strategy for long term, breakthrough success. It's reactive firefighting.
The root level challenge you’re facing is, “how might we break free from the production mindset?”
Invest In The Uncommon
Very few companies invest in research. Fewer still are able to identify actionable insights. And almost none action against them with focused precision. The ones that do, their customers call innovative.
Your org may have a research team, but are they offering evidence that inspires? You might have strategists, but are they empowered to affect change? ALL product teams are very busy, but are yours shepherding solutions that deliver measurable business results? I’m sure your designers and engineers would love to experiment, but do they have time?
Frankly, it's not likely. Most companies rely on data analytics, sales team feedback, and user reviews to enhance a backlog already overflowing with defects and debt. Most folks prioritize stories by urgency and politics. And while agile sounds great, it sure feels like waterfall when there's no freedom to explore concepts, test, and fail.
All of this is very common, and delivers common results.
Innovation is uncommon and demands an uncommon approach.
Discovery Changes Everything
Keep delivering high-priority backlog items, but also recognize: not everything in the backlog is actually high priority. If it's not breaking the system, and if it's not directly contributing to measurable business performance, then it is lower priority than adopting an uncommon approach - the discovery track.
Invest 10-20% of your team's capacity into research, experimentation, and validation.
I know, it sounds impossible, but here's what you gain from proper research alone:
Understand who your customers actually are and what they truly need
Gain renewed insight into your business - its real offering and value
Take a critical look at your team's capabilities and what's actually possible
With insight into what's desirable (customer needs), viable (business realities), and feasible (team capabilities), you can prioritize with confidence instead of instinct.
Research insights become hypotheses, added to the backlog and tagged for exploration. "How might we solve this?" Your product, design, and technology leads create conceptual designs - given time and authority to dream beyond what has been done into what could be done. Then you involve customers again, testing prototypes that prove the hypothesis and validate the solutions.
What comes out of discovery? Highly detailed delivery track stories.
At the start of discovery, you already documented what you want to create, why, and what you hope to prove. Now, at the start of the delivery track, you have proven design concepts and prototypes. Customers have validated what works and what needs refinement.
Delivery teams can now narrowly focus on production readiness and edge cases. UX hands off well-defined experiences to visual design. Visual design delivers robust brand application. Development receives detailed direction and stays fully fueled.
Your discovery investment pays off with validated concepts and fewer revisions. Clearer requirements. More confident execution. Design delivery isn't the bottleneck anymore because they're refining tested concepts, not inventing from scratch within the timeboxed sprint. Engineering builds with certainty because more-thorough designs have been proven with customers.
The efficiency gains exceed the investment. You're not losing capacity. You're redirecting it toward uncommon solutions for your biggest challenges. You’re on your way to innovation.
New Year, New You
Energy is high. Opportunities abound. Everyone’s ready for new and improved.
Strategic foundation work takes time, energy, and money. But it unlocks everything needed for true innovation. The sooner you start, the sooner you'll earn the results.
If you're staring down a massive backlog, sweating ambitious goals, and unsure how to translate vision into execution - that's the signal. Let's talk about how continuous discovery will create the breakthrough results your leadership expects.