Track Talk Th4

The 7Ps rule: Proper Planning & Preparation, Prevents P… Poor Performance

Søren Wassard

09:00-09:45 CEST Thursday 9th June

Proper Planning & Preparation, Prevents P… Poor Performance. This is also known as the 7Ps rule, a rule that is highly enforced within the armed forces. Let me quote Staff Sgt. Thomas Brick, 332nd Expeditionary Contracting Squadron, US Air Force:

The Seven Ps should be utilized while deployed more than ever, because if we fail to properly plan here* then the poor performance to follow could be the loss of life or multimillion dollar aircraft.” He also states: “Seven Ps aren’t just useful for the big things: they are useful in everyday operations and can make your job much easier. When any project comes to you, you should immediately set a plan in motion to not only get it accomplished, but to get it accomplished the right way.“.

So how do we do that? How can we do proper planning and preparation when it comes to building software?

As is, many companies don’t validate the solution upfront; they don’t know if it’s the right product for the right people, and they are too busy delivering to make sure what they do is the right thing.

This talk will give you a picture of the “to-be”: it will cover what happens before a backlog is created, and how we can make sure to validate the solution upfront, for instance, by using pretotyping, personas, RAT (Riskiest Assumption Testing), Design Sprints and much more, before we start building it.

Lets get focused on the right solution in the right quality – let’s start doing some proper planning and preparation!

* Iraq 2005