Product Strategist: Go, Story Maps, and Emergence

GLENDALE ca 91105 USA

Last week as I read AgileProductDesign.com post "The new user story backlog is a map" at http://tinyurl.com/c3gk3c, the sketch and then fill in the details of this approach reminded me of Go. I know I’ve mentioned Go from time to time here. In this article, I’ll walk you through the very beginning of Go to talk about its implicit geography and a few of its relationships with what product manager do as they work towards the emergence of their products under the Agile approach.

Go, an oriental strategy game, is played on a 19x19 board. Each side places a stone on an intersection, as in Pente, The player with the largest area wins. Stones your opponent captures are deducted from your score. Go introductions cover the tactical-level rules. When you read those rules, keep in mind that the game is a strategic game that emerges from the tactical-level rules. Capturing is not the point.

When learning, learn on the 9x9 board. Play fast. See the patterns.

This is the Go board. It looks nice and flat. It has edges. The intersections matter, not the squares. The darker points hint at something. They are the handicap spots. The weaker player gets a handicap based on the relative rank of the players. The weaker player gets the first turn, and a 6.5 point penalty that is deducted from their score at the end of the game. The handicap stones are placed on the handicap spots in corner, side, middle order—another hint.

The geography is one of efficiency. Holding some territory is easier than holding other territory. The edges increase efficiency. You don’t have to place stones on the edge to surround an area.

This means that the corners are easiest to control. The green background was removed around the corner handicap spots for emphasis only.

Corners are easiest. The sides are the next easiest. The middle is the hardest. In this figure, the green background has been removed for emphasis only.

In this figure, I’ve removed the background to show how much area a stone placed on the adjacent handicap spot influences. In go, a stone has influence, and it may have control. It’s influence depends on the nearness of supporting stones. Think whole product partners, API suppliers, and third-party developers and content providers. I have only shown influence from the handicap spot to the edge. Some influence extends towards the center of the board, but in the initial moves of the game that influence is limited.

On a purely mathematical basis, the outside of the board from the forth line to the edge is larger than the center of the board. Pushing your opponent into the middle wins the game for you. But, the center is so much smaller than the middle of the board that you will not get the entire outside.

This is a nearly tied game. Given the risks involved it is likewise unlikely. On the 13x13 board this “L” is a winner. On the 9x9 board, it is unlikely, but still a winner.

Keep in mind that you need influence and control in the early game. Control emerges at the end of the game.

Here the yellow areas represent influence, again only towards the edge. The white areas represent control earned by a stone placed on the third line (red) at c17 and j17. The white area also represents controlled area or points scored. The blue line is the influence line on the forth row. Stones place on the influence line exert influence, but no control without other stones providing additional influence and control. In the “Art of War” the goal was to deter fighting by asserting influence. As a product manager, you assert influence as a sketch, while the developers add the detail based on your prior influence. You define the rough partitions of the space.

Now, we will dip into tactics, because they hint at a strategy.

The white areas defined by the red boundaries show how much space it takes to make life. Making life grants immortality. A formation making life cannot be captured. It has life, because your opponent cannot simultaneously fill both eyes, the open intersections surrounded by the stones on the red lines, Not being able to fill the space over successive turns is a consequence of the suicide rule. You can fill a space if doing so immediately kills the opponent’s formation.

The area required to make life hints at a control strategy. Deny life. In the center of the board, it takes a 3x5 area to minimally make life; at the edge, 2x5; in the corner 2x2 minimally, or more. The bottom right formation can be denied life by placing a stone at r3, and p2. After those two moves the six stones required to make life would all be dead unless they escaped into the center. Think of this as leaving only the niches too small to support your competition. But, Christensen warned that in a real business, it is that business’s cost structure that determines their ability to enter small niches. You might not be able to limit a young startup’s niche entries, since you are too large to play there.

So are you have seen how a seemingly flat environment is actually highly structured. Vertical markets are structured. You can use that structure as you face the prospects of commercializing a discontinuous or radical innovation. You have seen how some resources determine your efficiency, and your ability to control a market.

One key go proverb says “always make the largest move.” Go players don’t always do that. They want to fight, which drops them out of their strategic game. It forces them into tactics and reactive play. Keeping the initiative goes along way in this game. For the product manager, it means getting proactive as soon as possible, and staying in the proactive, strategic game. Sketch then fill in the details, just as Jeff Patton suggested with his story maps. Flat user stories bugged him. Kind of like the secrets of the flat Go board.