The 7 questions I ask on every project - Introduction (1/8)

Over the last few years I’ve managed the insights contribution (data science, user research, experimentation) on a number of projects, ranging from very short ones within a teams agile sprint to a full redesign of Spotify’s free product - which involved several hundred people.

In the process I’ve come to view new projects through a series of 7 questions that, if answered, can lead to a more successful outcome or save valuable time and resources.

While project leadership will often ask the research team for very specific things, such as usability testing or an audience segmentation, I try to resist the urge to directly put on the lens of a data scientist or user researcher. My conviction is that, for anyone involved in decision making, it can be very helpful to instead look at the project through the following series of questions:

1. Should we do something?

2. What should we try?

3. Will it be worth it?

4. Is this the right direction?

5. Are we there yet?

6. Are you sure?

7. What now?

Taken for themselves each of these might seem trivial but each of them require to be answered at different points in time and with different research methods or you won’t be using them to their full potential.

Doing this exercise is also very helpful to document the answers you pick up so everyone joining the team at any stage can get up to speed. If you are lucky enough to have critical thinkers on your team, they’ll want to question your assumptions when coming on to the project. This can help focus that discussion.

Of course I need to acknowledge that this is a generalisation across many projects. And of course each individual project has different requirements and limitations. So to do the project at hand justice while not starting from scratch I usually begin with this exact set of questions and then figure out where I might alter them as I go.

To not George-R-R-Martin this I'm splitting the rest of this story into 7 different posts, one for each question. Find below the links as far as published now:

1. Should we do something? (coming soon)

2. What should we try? (coming soon)

3. Will it be worth it? (coming soon)

4. Is this the right direction? (coming soon)

5. Are we there yet? (coming soon)

6. Are you sure? (coming soon)

7. What now? (coming soon)