Explore is the new thing (or phase) which is now evident for many people, especially many proponents of agile methodologies.
Lean Enterprise authors said Explore than Exploit. Kent Back calls it 3Xs (Explore, Expand, Extract).
But the intention on this exploration phase has also been presented with a different name: Discovery.
The British Design Council’s Double Diamond first phase – Discovery – is about exploring the insights into the problem.
Jeff Patton and Marty Cagan are talking about Dual track development (Discovery and development conjoined model); once again, discovery is about exploring.
discovery and development conjoined model by Jeff Patton
In 2016 I was involved on a project that was a misfit for a typical agile delivery (start with a Lean Inception, than work alliteratively and incrementally releasing great software as MVP).
That specific “project” was something on the Explore space. At the time, I was translating the Lean enterprise book to Portuguese. I was also reading many books and articles on this explore/discovery space. So I tried new things on that project.
During the first two months of that project, we used something we found useful for guiding us during the Explore phase. Things worked really well. I documented it and shared with more people. Then we opened it as and eBook (still on the very early stage): Experimentation Sprints eBook
The thing is, the digital transformation has taken modern and agile practices to a new level. Some of it will be re-purposed to the Explore phase, some new stuff will rise on this space. I am looking forward to the learning on this Explore area.
This might be of your interest:
