Thread by @ProductChapter

How the UK government could’ve learned a thing or two from product management models and techniques to better communicate the roadmap out of Covid-19 restrictions 🦠🇬🇧

A longish thread 🧵

#prodmgmt

Disclaimer 🚨

This thread is not an attempt to make a political point, simply to explore where PM practices may have helped…

In February 2021, a number of months in advance, Boris Johnson proclaimed the UK’s roadmap out of lockdown, culminating in the now infamous ‘Freedom Day’ some time around July 2021.

This, we were allowed to believe, was the day we could expect to get our lives back after over 1 year under varying degrees of lockdown and restrictions.

We could look forward to all restrictions on social contact and events being removed.

“Great!”, thought the people. Their leader had said it so it must be true.

Parties were planned, holidays were booked, spirits were raised and, importantly, expectations were set. 🎉

For those of us experienced in project or product management, this was like saying to a hungry stakeholder that they’ll get their ‘thing’ on an exact date months in the future, before truly understanding scope, effort, complexity, predictability of said ‘thing’.

What the government’s ‘roadmap’ didn’t fully account for was the rapidly changing and unpredictable nature of the environment.

Spikes in infections, increases in transmissibility, and the emergence of new variants all meant that the picture was ever-changing.

Q: How could a government predict with any ounce of certainty and so far in advance when the country could expect things to return to ‘normal’, never mind communicate it in the way that they did?

A: They couldn’t, and perhaps shouldn’t, have. At least not in the way they did…

In reality, things unsurprisingly didn’t go to plan and ‘Freedom Day’ was canned. A self-inflicted milestone missed.

The people were disappointed and, you could argue, the episode had an eroding effect on the public’s adherence to guidelines and willingness to comply.

So what could they have done differently?

For a start, communicating dates at the point of knowing least was a rookie error.

Being specific about the small details so far in advance was also inadvisable.

Not sufficiently allowing for unknowns was naive.

Sound familiar?

Here follows some basic models and concepts typically deployed by PMs that could’ve helped inform the government’s approach during this unprecedented time:

1. Be wary of high integrity commitments

@cagan writes about High Integrity Commitments and the perils of making them too soon. He advocates instead for teams to be given appropriate time and space before committing.

svpg.com/managing-commi…

2. Wait until the Last Responsible Moment

The concept of keeping decisions open until the cost of not making a decision becomes greater than the cost of making a decision.

In other words, not committing until you absolutely have to.

(Thanks @sambhigham for this one)

3. Thinking in Now/Next/Later

@simplybastow’s template would’ve been perfect. Boris need only have committed to dates and scope where clarity was available in the current horizon.

Next and Later horizons would’ve given an indication of direction of travel without being binding

https://twitter.com/simplybastow/status/1168531672335343616

4. Expecting and preparing for unknown-unknowns

@joulee refers to these as unk-unks.

The UK’s plan only considered the fabled Happy Path. In reality, there were numerous unk-unks that surfaced for which there was a lack of preparedness.

https://twitter.com/joulee/status/1431270473585737732

5. Framing in objectives instead of initiatives

Initiatives (eg increase limit of wedding attendees) are experiments that can’t be guaranteed to work. Objective based roadmaps shift emphasis to delivery of a quantifiable outcome. E.g:Rate of transmission (R-number) below {value}

So, if you’re an aspiring or junior PM, there are lessons to be learned here on what *not* to do when attempting to manage demanding stakeholders’ expectations against a backdrop of uncertainty.

They are:

1. Be cautious of high integrity commitments
2. Wait until the Last Responsible Moment
3. Think in Now/Next/Later
4. Plan for unknown unknowns
5. Frame in objectives instead of initiatives.

Good PMs are masters at thinking and communicating in outcomes and expertly managing expectations.

These skills & models may not have changed the timeline for the route out of lockdown but at the very least would have helped to better manage expectations of a demanding public.

Back to the start of the 🧵

https://twitter.com/productchapter/status/1499095358474960898