{"id":672,"date":"2017-06-16T13:27:32","date_gmt":"2017-06-16T12:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scrummable.com\/?p=672"},"modified":"2017-07-07T19:45:22","modified_gmt":"2017-07-07T18:45:22","slug":"making-the-mission-impossible-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/scrummable.com\/making-the-mission-impossible-possible\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the Mission: Impossible possible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jack Reacher is pretty fabulous. If anyone reading this has read a Jack Reacher novel, or watched one of the Jack Reacher films, you’ll be aware of the awesomeness of Jack Reacher. Jack Reacher.<\/div>\n

He’s mainly awesome, in my opinion, because of things like this:<\/p>\n

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The old, ‘punch you through a car window and steal your gun’ trick.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

See? The man is built like a tank, has the reflexes of a super-ninja, and the charm and wit of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park<\/em>. As a character, he seems to be almost entirely without flaw – proof that god can indeed give with both hands.<\/p>\n

And then (and I’m purely making this comparison because he’s another character that Tom Cruise seems to think he actually<\/strong> is, in real life) there’s Ethan Hunt. Does everyone remember Ethan Hunt? Silly question really – how could anyone forget the impossible mission leader working for the Impossible Mission Force? Let me refresh your memory. He does things like this:<\/p>\n

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exploding. goddamn. sunglasses.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

He’s pretty badass too. But I think there’s an interesting contrast between these two characters which we can relate directly to the day to day fun and games of working in the tech industry; problem solving.<\/p>\n

Ethan Hunt would be pretty pants at this in real life, for all his badassery. No doubt, he comes up with some fabulous solutions to some equally fabulous problems – but, in contrast, Jack Reacher approaches problems like a product team will approach user stories: we assess their size and break them down. In contrast, Ethan Hunt would take a problem the size of a businesses entire 5 year plan and attempt to headbutt it until it isn’t there any more. And then set it on fire. Yes, true, they always seem to make the impossible mission possible, in Mission Impossible (boy was that fun to write), but this is the movies; in real life this approach can get a team pretty unstuck pretty quickly. More on that later.<\/p>\n

Let’s make a comparison to illustrate my point (thanks IMDB!). Here’s the synopsis for MI2:<\/p>\n

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Ethan Hunt leads his IMF team on a mission to capture a deadly German virus before it is released by terrorists. His mission is made impossible due to the fact that he is not the only person after samples of the disease. He must also contest with a gang of international terrorists headed by a turned bad former IMF agent who has already managed to steal the cure.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And here’s the synopsis for Jack Reacher: Never Go Back:<\/p>\n

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Investigator Jack Reacher springs into action after the arrest of Susan Turner, an Army major accused of treason. Suspecting foul play, Jack embarks on a mission to prove that the head of his old unit is innocent.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There’s a pretty stark difference here between the two problems being tackled – and one important detail is neglected in the second synopsis, namely being that Jack Reacher wants to clear Susan Turner’s name because he wants to go on a date with her. Because she has a nice voice. That’s a nice, sizeable problem to tackle. Getting a date. Ethan Hunt however is attempting to save the world from utter devastation. And zombies. German virus zombies.<\/p>\n

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Deep. Breathy. Intimate.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Now, I have to apportion some of the blame here on the Impossible Mission Force; I mean, the company actively discourages breaking down an impossible mission into several, smaller, possible missions, and I can see some obvious reasons why that makes sense, not least from a PR and recruitment angle. Who wouldn’t want to work for the Impossible Mission Force? That job title would make for a most excellent business card. In contrast, Jack Reacher is a lone agent, a self-confessed maverick who plays by his own rules; he has no Impossible Mission Force insisting that his missions remain impossible. It’s a nice life for some, trying to get a date and in the process solving a big conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I digress. The comparison being made here does, I promise, have some direct application to the world of product development. Our approach<\/strong> to a problem is as crucial as identifying the solution<\/strong> to the problem, and it underpins almost everything that comes afterwards: the metrics we’ll measure, how long we’ll spend trying to solve the problem, what the proposition looks like, and, fundamentally, whether we can even be successful or not. How we approach a problem and how we break it down is the bread and butter of our roadmap, and getting this step wrong can have huge repercussions.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t have to mean that we need to put limitations on our creative process and the possibilities for solving a problem, by any means;\u00a0I’m sure everyone is familiar with the concept of 10X <\/a>thinking, a term coined by Google, and yes there’s definitely a place for this in the sphere of product development; the point here though is that 10X thinking should be related to the solution we arrive at, not the size of the problem in the first place. 10X thinking can only exist once a realistic problem has been identified in the first place. We can’t apply magical thinking to a problem that is too big to solve, and there’s no point in trying to solve a problem as a whole if there’s any realistic proposition of breaking it down into smaller tasks. Breaking down a problem efficiently offers two key benefits; problems become easier to solve, and team morale improves as problems are, indeed, solved.<\/p>\n

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I’ve got nothing. I Googled ’10X thinking’ and this is what I found.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Let’s take a typical product team setup within a general business structure. We have;<\/p>\n