An important question to consider when the timer goes ding is "are we frustrated with how long it took to execute those ideas?"
In the Explore phase I mostly don't care about technical debt, as any investment I make is likely to be thrown away soon.
But the moment we get to the end of a timeline and think "that was a small idea but it took too long" we should pause and address some of the friction.
Explore isn't all hacking and slashing. If you can reduce the cost of experimentation through judicious engineering, that's worth bank. As long as you don't take so long to reduce it that you run out of money.
An important question to consider when the timer goes ding is "are we frustrated with how long it took to execute those ideas?"
In the Explore phase I mostly don't care about technical debt, as any investment I make is likely to be thrown away soon.
But the moment we get to the end of a timeline and think "that was a small idea but it took too long" we should pause and address some of the friction.
Explore isn't all hacking and slashing. If you can reduce the cost of experimentation through judicious engineering, that's worth bank. As long as you don't take so long to reduce it that you run out of money.
I just want to say that the headline on this caused me distress, because I thought you were shutting down the substack! <3
Oops, sorry. You won't get rid of me that easily.
Great callout with FOMO. In this context, the fear of missing out is the risk of missing out.