At this point, the strategy has brought focus on the most promising opportunity to address. The experience now needs to be fleshed out.
The plan articulates where the strategy phase has led us to, and pointers to validate viability, feasibility and desirability of the opportunity. This comes with a sense of readiness and willingness to invest: how much resources and capital is deemed acceptable or sustainable to realise the opportunity?
Once the plan is well understood by stakeholders, we explore different ways the opportunity can be addressed by the organisation. What is the best compromise between capital, target experience, perceived & delivered value, and time-to-market? How can we build a desirable service or product? Conceptual explorations are tested and shown to the target audience to observe reactions, and engineers to evaluate feasibility at scale.
By experience, this step is where the process can go wrong. Often there are too many ideas explored and it becomes hard to decide which ones to forego. Opinions can diverge between stakeholders. To overcome this, strong articulation of relevance and unbiased concept testing are important. This is why the plan has been carefully prepared and articulated to the teams: it gives the key to make swift, confident decisions.
Next: The Delivery Diamond