EYN#012 - Make the Complex Simple - The "Why and So What" Method

Articulating why a tech solution is valuable can be really hard.  Things that seem so obvious to you, are not so obvious to other people.  This is particularly true when they're an expert in a different field. 

So often, people fail to get to the plain English value of a solution, which means they don't get the sponsorship they need to get stuff done.

To solve this, I've often used the "Why" and "So What" method.  It's a slight variation of the 5 Why's method if you've ever come across it.

The idea is to recursively ask yourself "Why" and "So What" on a proposed solution until you've got to the plain English way to articulate the value.  Let's walk through an example, that starts at a very tech oriented position.

"We need to change the Scale Out threshold to 7"

Why

"Because at the moment it's set to 5 which is too low"

Why

"Each node is getting overloaded and performance is reduced"

So What

"User experience is degrading"

So What

"Customers are abandoning their shopping baskets because the website is so slow"

So What

"We're losing revenue."

Bingo!

So now an impactful way to say that in plain English is:

Headline: We need to make a configuration change because we’re losing revenue.

Detail: We need to change the Scale Out Threshold from 5 to 7 to increase the performance of the website.  This will reduce the number of abandoned shopping baskets and increase revenue.

If you can put some numbers on that even better. For example:

How much revenue?

How many shopping baskets are being abandoned?

Headline: We need to make a configuration change because we’re losing £10000 in revenue every month

Detail: We need to change the Scale Out Threshold from 5 to 7 to increase the performance of the website.  This will reduce the number of abandoned shopping baskets from 440 to 50 and increase revenue.

Use the "Why and So What" method and make the complex simple.

Hope this helps

BenP

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