Crafting Engineering Strategy

Chapter 6. Exploring

A surprising number of strategies are doomed from inception because their authors get attached to one particular approach without considering alternatives that would work better for their current circumstances. This happens, for instance, when engineers want to pick tools solely because they are trending, and when executives insist on adopting the tech stack from their prior organization where they felt comfortable.

Exploration is the antidote to early anchoring. It forces you to consider the problem widely before evaluating any of the possible paths forward. Exploration is about verifying your prior experience remains relevant, rather than assuming the industry’s been stagnant since you last worked on a given problem. Exploration is continuing to believe that things can get better when you’re not watching.

This chapter covers:

• The goals of the exploration phase of strategy creation

• When to explore (always first!) and when it makes sense to stop exploring

• How to explore a topic, including common mechanisms like mining for internal precedent, reading industry papers and books, and leveraging your external network

• Why you must avoid making judgments while exploring

By the end of this chapter, you’ll be able to conduct an exploration for your current strategy or the next one you work on.

What Is Exploration?

One of the frequent antipatterns I’ve encountered among senior leadership is the Grand Migration, where a new leader declares that a massive migration ...