One of Oxford University Press’ 2024 shortlisted Words of the Year was:
“Dynamic Pricing”
(n.) The practice of varying the price for a product or service to reflect changing market conditions; in particular, the charging of a higher price at a time of greater demand.
Given the rising and fluctuating cost of living for everything from groceries to concert tickets, I can understand why it was on the shortlist.
For me, the key phrase in the definition was “… to reflect changing market conditions”
When I think of all the product development teams that I’ve worked with in the past, the biggest difference maker between winning products and losing products was how well those teams heeded that key phrase.
How dynamic and adaptable were their product plans to changing market conditions?
“Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.”
Agile Manifesto Principle #7
Were they willing to embrace changes (market or otherwise) continuously for the benefit of their customers?
Or, were they prepared to penalize customers for even thinking about any change to the product?
Were they sticking with their static plan, standing pat come hell or high water?
Or, were they willing to adopt dynamic planning, bobbing and weaving as needed?
What’s the Difference?
Static Plans
Grounded on a belief in the ability to:
- Plan and predict.
- Set and forget.
Falling in love with the plan and ignoring the results.
The problem with static plans can be summed up well with a quote from the German military strategist, Helmuth von Moltke:
“No plan survives contact with the enemy”
Or, contact with the market for that matter.
Dynamic Planning
Grounded on a belief in the ability to:
- Sense and respond.
- Plan, do, check, act. And, then repeat indefinitely.
The advantage with dynamic planning lies in three key concepts:
- The Cone of Uncertainty.
- Why would you commit to anything at the beginning of a project when your estimates could be off by a factor of four?
- Worst yet, if nothing is done to reduce variability and confusion your cone will turn into an expanding cloud of uncertainty.
- The 3 C’s of a User Story.
- Card, Conversation, Confirmation. Of these 3, Conversation is critical to dynamic planning.
- Conversations should never end once the user story Card has been drafted.
- Working Software.
- Imagine visiting a restaurant and only being able to see their menu but not being able to taste the actual food?!
- That’s kinda the feeling I get when I see BDUF (Big Design Up Front) initiatives with lots of UX wireframes but nary a piece of working software anywhere to be seen or tested.
A recent client learned this lesson the hard way. Continuing their story from an earlier post, they were ready to change. And now, also realized the “immutable” plan they had stubbornly clung onto was reporting nonsensical progress that would’ve been a “nonstarter” if shared with senior leadership.
They were leaving the old world of Static Plans for good.
Their feet now firmly planted in the new world of Dynamic Planning.
Next Chapter Consulting 