Strategy affects direction, design, and the quality of the end product.
Here are some symptoms to help you identify when a project that is not working well:
- No one on the team can clearly communicate the underlying motivation for key decisions
- Decisions are being made from the top down but executed from the bottom up
- Decisions are neither justified nor validated – they’re reactive and impulsive rather than deliberate and mindful
- Innovation is seen as doing something the competition hasn’t done yet
- No one has considered how to measure the success of design decisions
- The primary on-going goal is to add new functionality (rather than improve what you already have)
- Everyone has conflicting ideas of what they should be working on
So pause once in a while to see if you need to address any of these points and you’ll have a much easier time.