Lessons From Barbie for When a Project Absolutely MUST Succeed - Mike Cohn

I finally watched Barbie. I enjoyed it, which doesn’t surprise me. It had to be good.

Barbie was a must-succeed project. If the movie had flopped, it would probably be a decade before anyone could try again to make a Barbie movie.

But a successful movie would serve as a platform for sequels.

While watching Barbie (and singing along to “I’m Just Ken”) I was struck by a few important lessons that apply to any must-succeed project.

The first tip for successful project management is to solicit and act on as much fast feedback as you can get on preliminary versions of your product.

For Barbie, the filmmakers ran test screenings in multiple cities, analyzed feedback, and ran more test screenings. In our words, they iterated toward making a great movie.

The second tip for managing projects successfully? Leave things out. Not every scene that’s filmed makes it to the final movie.

During test screenings of Barbie, the filmmakers performed what product development teams call A/B testing. Different versions of the movie were shown to different audiences to see which were best received.

They used this feedback to remove scenes or shots that weren’t necessary to the flow or humor of the film.

Not every feature a team builds should remain in the product. The sunk cost fallacy often clouds our judgment—when we spend time building that feature, we think we might as well leave it in just in case someone wants it.

But no. Unneeded and rarely used features clutter the user interface just as unneeded scenes can ruin a movie.

Third, have a visionary who keeps the project focused but engage others for increased creativity. Greta Gerwig was that visionary for Barbie. She directed the movie and co-wrote the script. Her vision drove what we experience when watching the film.

Agile projects have product owners who should act as visionaries for their products. They should see the future and guide others toward it.

But no visionary, even an auteur filmmaker such as Gerwig, does it alone. The best welcome creativity from others on the project (including stakeholders and developers).

During the production of 2001: A Space Odyssey, director Stanley Kubrick used a novel idea from his team.

It was critical that HAL, the spaceship’s onboard computer, overhear that crew members Poole and Bowman were going to disconnect him.

Kubrick brainstormed ideas of how HAL could overhear those private conversations but could find no good solution.

The solution came from his associate producer, Victor Lyndon, whose job had mostly been filing insurance paperwork for the film. Lyndon casually suggested that HAL can read lips.

The vision for the film adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's story remained very much Kubrick’s, but he knew to use great ideas without regard for their origin.

Finally, if you are working on a project that absolutely must succeed, include Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie as team members.

OK, their coding, design, and database skills are probably lacking, but they were perfect as Ken and Barbie.

Project Success Tip 1: Solicit Feedback as Early as PossibleProject Success Tip 2: Leave Some Features OutProject Success Tip 3: Have a Visionary But Find Good Ideas AnywhereProject Success Tip 4: Have the Right Team

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