Trash Can Tracking

Petra Wille (0:04)

Hi folks, this is All Things Product with Petra Wille and Teresa Torres. And we're so happy you're here.

Teresa Torres (0:17)

Petra, I heard that you have this tactic called trashcan tracking.

It makes me think of Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street. I don't know why, but it does. Trashcan tracking. Are you like keeping track of what you're recycling and not?

Petra Wille (0:37)

Oh yeah, Germans are very good at recycling.

Teresa Torres (0:40)

Everybody knows that. Every time I go to Europe, I go, wow, us Americans, we're jerks because we're not very good at this. I mean, I only want recycling. The whole world knows we're already jerks, so shocking.

But I have a feeling it's not about recycling. Tommy, what's the story with?

Petra Wille (0:59)

With the trash cans.

Teresa Torres (1:01)

We got punchy. It's going to be a fun episode. What's the story with trash can tracking?

Yeah.

Petra Wille (1:09)

So at first, maybe lead with the problem of what trash can tracking is solving. Oftentimes, I get asked either by leadership people, executives or teams, how do we know if we innovate enough? Interesting question. Or different, slightly different question, but able to be answered with the same trash can tracking technique.

Do we know if our discovery is actually a real discovery? So both interesting questions.

Teresa Torres (1:39)

Now, before you continue, can I push on the first question for a second?

Petra Wille (1:42)

Okay, go for it.

Teresa Torres (1:43)

A little philosophical aside.

Petra Wille (1:46)

Yeah. X course.

Teresa Torres (1:48)

Should our goal be innovation? Maybe that should be a whole separate episode. We don't have to go on this side on this. Yeah.

Petra Wille (1:57)

The thing is, I think that strongly, that depends on the company's vision and the company's strategy. In some market and industries, there is a lot of pressure around innovation. Then, of course, partial goal of your discovery should be being innovative and inventing things that maybe the competition has not yet invented.

But you are right, for many, many companies, it's more hygiene factors that are avoiding their success with the customer than it is the mass of innovations. That was my short answer. Yeah.

Teresa Torres (2:29)

And already, like, there's so many things I want to push back on. You know what? We're going to put a pin in this, and I think we're going to record an episode called Unpacking Innovation.

Petra Wille (2:40)

Okay. I will prepare for that one.

Teresa Torres (2:43)

You identified two questions that you get often. Are we being innovative enough, and does our discovery work?

Petra Wille (2:50)

Yeah. Now we will put a picture of the task boards that I will be talking about in the show notes. But for now, the people listening to this need to picture agile task boards. As we know them, they have columns.

And to some of those columns, I love to attach a trashcan symbol, which usually is most of the times just a symbol, because virtual boards everywhere these days, and none of these companies has yet taken my ass to put trashcans in their software. So it's more virtual thing that we do. But if we do the golden trashcan, that's the most fun one. The golden trashcan is at the end of the delivery board. So we do all the delivery, we go through all the motions, we put it live, we put it in front of our users, and then we realize, okay, nobody's using the feature, or they hate the feature, or they're not adopting the feature, or the feature is not working in a way we was hoping the feature should be working, and it's not solving their customer problem.

And then what most likely is not done is, first of all, acknowledging that, number one, and then getting rid of the code again, right? Because that is what actually would make the difference. So we realize it was not as successful as we were hoping for, and we would remove the code. And that is the golden trash can, because we went through discovery motions, then most likely, there was not real discovery, because otherwise we would have figured out earlier that it is a bonkers idea. Then we built the entire thing. We QA'd it, it was on our board forever. We put it through all our release cycles, and then we realized it's not working. So that's the golden trash can. We want to avoid stuff moving into that trash can at any cost. And how do we do this?

Glad you're asking, Teresa. Better discovery techniques. Better discovery techniques would help us learn earlier what works and what doesn't. And this is how we can avoid things ending up in that trash can. That trash can has nothing to do with innovation, I'd say. It's purely to see if discovery is working from my perspective.