Why do it?
What unforeseen pitfalls are waiting to
derail your plan? What opportunities
might you be missing out on? Taking
some time to run through some what-ifs
about your plan is a great way to bust out
of your routine thinking and surface
pitfalls, discover efficiencies, and improve
your strategy ahead of time.
How to do it:
- Determine hypothetical questions about different aspects of your
current plan to ask yourself (and/or your team).
These questions could explore various dimensions that help you see your plan from a
new perspective. For example:
Timeline: What if we had one additional week to finish this? What might we
have time to explore or develop that we’re not looking at now?
Budget: What if we had half the budget to do this? What key elements would we
still want to keep?
Outcome: What if we knew that customers would hate this version as soon as it
was released? Why would they hate it?
Context: What if we knew that a competitor was launching something similar a
week before ours? What could our version have that would set it apart? - Give yourself (and/or your team) time to consider what might happen
in each scenario.
Depending on your situation, you might want to brainstorm solo or as a team. Or you
could send your list of what-if questions to the team ahead of time and ask them to
bring ideas to a group discussion. - Incorporate what you learn into the project plan. 1/2
Now that you’ve explored the upsides and downsides of these hypothetical scenarios,
look for improvements you could make to your current plan. If any promising changes
affect your team, be sure to include them in the decision-making process of whether to
implement them.
