Crafting Vision: A Lesson in Managing Program Dependencies
Guild Wars 2 can absolutely make you a better Technical Program Manager. Here’s how.
“Where in the f*ck is this NPC?”
I’d been lurking on the Jahai Bluffs map for over an hour desperately waiting for an NPC to spawn so I could complete what felt like step 58 of this collection quest. And he just wasn’t showing up.
You see, a couple weeks earlier, I had decided that I wanted to unlock the legendary accessory, Vision. I knew what I was signing up for. It would be session after session of grinding for various in-game ingredients which would unlock the next step.
Rinse and repeat until I eventually ended up with the final 4 components I would need to craft Vision.
And the reward would be worth it. We are talking about a premier endgame item that would let you change your stats on the fly (including whatever new meta evolves from the latest release). Even better was that every other player would see the visual indicator of the item you unlocked, aka, instant bragging rights.
There was just one catch.
To unlock Vision, you need to understand the proper sequence of events that would unlock each required material.
Our deliverables are legendary items
You’ve probably never thought about your programs in this way but your deliverables are basically legendary items.
Day after day, you grind it out to unlock the prerequisites needed. Especially for multi-quarter and multi-year, large-scale programs, you often only have a vague idea of how to reach your desired outcome.
So you take it one step at a time.
“What’s the next piece we need? How do we go about getting it?”
“All right. Done. What’s next?”
One foot in front of the other. One task completed on your team’s sprint board then onto the next.
What I do and how it will help you achieve your goals faster
Here are some actions you can try to keep your dependencies in check.
Research and simplify
Before I even took my first step in crafting Vision, I did my research. I can’t tell you how many times I watched Mukluk’s YT walkthrough, read through pages and pages of GuildJen’s guide, and looked up every needed item on the Guild Wars 2 Wiki.
Let’s say your team is responsible for a major migration for a tool you’ve never used before.
Pull up the vendor’s docs. Watch videos on the topic. Search for a migration framework that others may have used.
Map your unlock sequence
Glimpse. Mystic Tribute. Gift of Prescience. Gift of Arid Mastery.
Combine these 4 ingredients and you’ll be sitting pretty as the owner of Vision.
Mystic Tribute can be bought. That’s easy peasy.
The Gifts of Prescience and Arid Mastery have time-gated sub-ingredients. Just log in daily for a few weeks and collect them.
Glimpse… now this one requires the most planning. 20 steps to unlock it, each with their own dependencies.
What’s the Glimpse in your program that needs to be unlocked?
Maybe that migration your team is working on is just one deliverable in a larger transformation program. But it’s the Glimpse that has the most intricacies. Lay out your path to that deliverable. Pull in your SMEs (subject matter experts) to get a well-rounded and holistic view of what it’s going to take. Understand how all the pieces connect. Tools like Miro and Confluence whiteboard are great for this. But don’t get stuck on the tooling; pen and paper will work just fine.
Check in with your guild
Sometimes you just get stuck and can’t move forward. That’s when you need to check in.
This is where my guild members came in clutch. When I couldn’t find that NPC, they jumped in to help me. They even accelerated my journey to Vision by showing me the steps that were optional essentially removing what I thought previously were dependencies.
Who are your guild members in your program? These are the people that have already completed that step before, maybe even crafted their own Vision. They can point out the connections you’ve missed.
Find those who have walked a similar path to save you the headache of a missed program goal.
Takeaway
This week’s Min-Max action is to pull together a session with your program’s stakeholders and outline the unlock sequence. Align on your outcomes, challenge assumed constraints, and uncover the hidden dependencies that are keeping your program stuck.