202112181448 Explore, expand, extract

Similar to 202108261302 Prototype, Expand, Consolidate, Explore, Expand, Extract is a three phase 202109061338 Software Engineering practice. This practice has been popularized by Microsoft and Facebook.¹

The explore phase is loosely structured if structured at all. The goal is to find cool things, and gain organic traction for those cool ideas. This phase is also low-cost and low-risk for organizations because of the small investment, ease of change, and willingness to abandon failures. This phase should throw caution to the wind and explore even unlikely solutions to increase the likelihood of finding something novel and valuable (202408060133 Caution and perfectionism hurt progress).

The purpose of the expand phase is to take the biggest winners from the explore phase and scale them from POCs to production products. During this phase, we often find out what it really is through research and widespread feedback. Things that go through this phase are big wins or failures because of the large investment and desire to see it come to fruition.

The extract phase is all about extracting maximum value out of a solution that’s already working well in production. This phase concerns itself with things like KPIs, performance, unit economics, and ROI for reducing costs. Wins can be big here, but there are maintenance and operating costs as well. There is also a possibility of downside by not allowing more time for exploration when people are tied to the existing products.