Action 1

A) Five why’s - Use the “Five Whys” laddering technique to help clarify the team perception of relative importance. The goal here is not to cause frustration, but to make visible underlying reasons for ranking a solution highly that then can be used to compare across competing solutions. Something that may seem self-evident to one team member may not be to the rest of the team. The question pattern is “Why is it important that (we do it this way)”, followed by “Why is it important that (whatever the prior answer was)”, etc. Five Whys will usually get you to greater understanding, if the team still does not see it, go for Six Whys! (Ohno, Taiichi (1988).)

Action 2

A) Time to market - Another consideration to evaluate is time frame to market. Does the team see an opportunity to start with one option to get early wins and further practical learnings, while reserving another option as a potential follow-up with increased functionality? (Kenneth B. Kahn, Editor,The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development, Second Edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2004)

Action 3

A) Once again around the cycle - Do not expect that the team will converge on a solution in one cycle. There may be a partial candidate solution, but with gaps that still need to be addressed. If the team is not resolved, first advance to the Adventure phase, celebrate the cycle and the ambiguity that we signed up for. Leverage the findings from both the prototyping/testing phase and the Evaluation/testing phase to craft updated problem statement(s) for the next Ideation phase. “How might we solve X while maintaining Y, and minimizing Z?”

Notes