Exploration is one of the most important issues related to the complexity of product development.
Innovation has always been accompanied by the exploration of new ideas that impact customers and the company.
This is the aspect of Exploration that balances the efficientist aspect of Exploitation.
Companies that know how to balance these two tensions are called bimodal or ambidextrous, and they are the ones that achieve the best results.
Exploration involves the acceptance of new ideas and the knowledge that these will exponentially bring forth many more. Exploration is associated with the concept of the emergence of new ideas or solutions.
For those coming from classic predictive planning methods, it is difficult to think of specifications that are constantly changing and a plan that adapts to what emerges.
A change in mental approach (mindset) is needed to do adaptive planning and on a limited time front.
The development of today’s products, which integrate technologies and many skills, is complex.
Even within the logic of adaptive planning, of a complex project, it is important to estimate at the beginning of the project the work hours, investments and important appointments or milestones.
These estimates will be more inaccurate the higher the complexity of the development project.
Working on what emerges is the essence of working in complexity.
The approach is that of the researcher exploring multiple directions, and based on the results, deciding in which directions to continue or whether to change the direction and/or next steps.
If I refer explicitly to the experiences of Agile development of physical products, the exploratory part characterizes all phases of the project.
The many-sidedness of development, given the multiplicity of perspectives required by design for X and the comparison of alternative solutions among them, is strongly generative of new ideas.
At the end of each iteration, in the presence of stakeholders with multidisciplinary expertise, the team presents its work (sprint review).
During these sprint reviews the comments of the people present bring out comments and/or suggestions, for each developed element that is presented.
These emergent comments and/or suggestions feed, along with previously thought-out do’s and don’ts (backlog), into the activity that follows of planning subsequent iterations (sprint planning).
In practice, this critical analysis of what is produced, together with what emerges, actually constitutes a design review that is repeated at each iteration.
In my experience, the autonomy of agile cross functional teams, coupled with the psychological safety of accepting error, leads people to an desire to explore challenging ideas and solutions.
Sprint review to be generative, it is important that it unleashes the creativity of the people present.
All the development teams I worked with during this generative meeting respect the rule that it is forbidden to ban unless you go completely off topic.
When, during the development of a product component or subsystem, one is faced with technical contradictions that need to be resolved, exploring new solutions is often the only option the team has.
This is one of the most difficult steps for those coming from a predictive approach and a focus on efficiency (exploitation) to understand, because it is normal to plan far ahead and to consider every element that emerges as a disruptive element. Exploration leads us to consider the new elements that emerge, like some treasures that may turn out to be precious To do something truly innovative.
