2026.17. Starting Questions for Alternative Plans

My podcast this week is from the Continual Planning book. Enjoy!

(You might not see the podcast in the frame below, depending on how you read my feed. If you see a blank space or a white box, do click through to the post itself. Thanks.)

The Podcast:

The Transcript:

This is 60 Seconds of Writing in Public with Johanna Rothman for June 19, 2026, where I read an excerpt of just a minute of some writing in progress.

This is from the Continual Planning book.

That iteration, the continual planning of discovery based on delivery, means that these products often require more and different alternatives than anyone might expect at the start.

That’s because we know the least about the product and the customers at the start. We especially do not know how the customers will respond when we offer them those first increments of value.

Instead of long and detailed plans, consider these four questions about the product development:

  1. What is the goal for this effort? That goal includes these questions: Which problems do we want to solve and for whom?
  2. What are the boundaries of the work? Which contexts define those problems?
  3. How few problems can we solve to learn if we are on the right track?
  4. How can we use each finished increment of value to revisit the goal, the work boundaries, and the problems we want to solve?

The Video:

The video link is here.

Leave a Reply

Scroll to Top