The Freedom of WHY and the Limits of HOW

I’m Florian and I co-founded a software development consultancy earlier this year after working as developer & project manager at another service company for the last few years. I spend most of my days thinking about client projects, discussing items in the backlog, and implementing them. What I — and in my opinion all project managers with a strong technical background — have to take care of, is to not think about the how

Whenever you have your project manager / consultant / product owner hat on your head, your only job is to think and speak about the who, the what, the why, and the when.

Persona (who) wants something (what) because of the reason (why) and they need it until then (when).

Notice, that we do not yet talk about the how. It is important to leave that one out, even if you have itchy fingers and think that you already know the best possible approach. Keep your thoughts to yourself, even try to not think about it and stay focused on the who, what, why, and when. The how will be part of another meeting — one that you’ll maybe be part of, but then with a different hat (the software engineer hat).

WHY expands your thoughts, HOW constrains them.

If you talk about the how to early, you’ll often miss the best ideas and approaches. First define the problem and think about whether it is an actual problem, before you start thinking in technical (how) terms. Let the team decide on the how once all other “w” questions have been answered and you feel comfortable to present the story to your team. Most often, after they’ve been shown a well-defined user story free from all the slack that discussions bring with them, their minds will be better able to come up with the best possible solution. Just make sure they understand the context of the story, but you do not have to explain to them all the little details you’ve talked about and that led to nowhere if they do not come up with questions that’d lead to the same blind end you’ve already discovered. Just help them dive into the problem and let them come up with the best approach to solve the problem.

Stay in the freedom of WHY and avoid the limits of HOW until you’re certain what the problem is.