Does size matter?

We had a design team lunch at Five Guys Burger twice.

On our first visit, we enjoyed the burgers but wasted the chips; the rumour that Five Guys will load extra chips to fill your bag is real. Perhaps, five large chips were too much for five designers — mistake number one.

We ordered three large chips on the second attempt, but we still wasted them again. After all, it had been a while since our first visit, so we had forgotten Five Guys’ secret sauce (which is actually a secret chip) to impress their customers with extra chips.

My point is that it’s very important for designers to learn from their mistakes and recognise them. The sooner, the better. In this case, it took us two attempts to realise that we had overordered our chips. Also, the gap between the first and second time made it difficult to recognise our initial mistake.

Imagine if we ate Five Guys every day; we wouldn’t overorder the chips on the second day. Moreover, we would likely do much better if we had to order more large orders from Five Guys for a company lunch.

It matters to work in small batches size to prevent large mistakes, reduce waste, and increase velocity.

Product Managers, Engineers, and Designers should share their work regularly. The product team should aim to ship something every week, a process known as “Build-Measure-Learn.”

The size matters.

Next time I will ensure we do not waste ships or chips.

Thanks for reading

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