There’s a moment in every complex project where things feel stuck. Too many stakeholders. Not enough shared language. A platform vision that feels powerful—but abstract. Dependencies wrapped around decisions that haven’t been made yet.
I’ve led enough product and platform efforts to know: starting with a backlog won’t fix that. You don’t align a team by shipping faster—you align them by building shared story, shared structure, and shared understanding.
1) Start with a Story, Not a Sprint
I use the Hero’s Journey framework to help teams understand where they are—not just technically, but emotionally:
- The Call to Adventure: a business problem or regulatory gap
- Crossing the Threshold: the build or redesign begins
- The Ordeal: systems break, communication falters, progress slows
- The Return with the Elixir: delivery that actually works
The story gives teams a map they can feel and a path they can follow together.
2) Use Service Blueprints to Map the Terrain
Once the story is shared, we map the system. Service blueprints visualize:
- User experience and actions
- Front-stage interactions (UIs, APIs)
- Back-stage infrastructure (automation, compliance)
- Where things break down or get misaligned
The blueprint becomes a shared artifact for engineers, designers, and security to align on.
3) Layer the Work: Cupcake → Cake → Wedding Cake
This framework helps teams prioritize across platform layers without “build everything now” mode:
- Cupcake: a focused slice of value that solves one pain point well
- Cake: broader adoption, stable interfaces, clearer docs
- Wedding Cake: scalable, multi-layered, self-service
The key insight: different parts of a platform can be at different maturity levels—and that’s strategic.
4) Practice Empathy as a Product Skill
Not all friction is technical. Practical empathy helps distinguish:
- What people do (tickets, standups)
- What people think and believe (mental models, motivations)
Misalignment often comes from different internal maps. Empathy surfaces what “value” means to different stakeholders.
5) Anchor to Service Principles
Lou Downe’s Good Services principles keep work grounded:
- A good service meets a real need
- It’s easy to find, understand, and use
- It doesn’t expose internal complexity to the user
Final Thought: Complexity Isn’t the Problem—Misalignment Is
Most project complexity is just misalignment at different levels—story, system, priority, emotion. The framework I return to:
- Story to align hearts
- Blueprints to align systems
- Layered strategy to prioritize investment
- Empathy to uncover real drivers
- Service design principles to keep the work grounded
If you’re building platforms or working across team boundaries, I’d love to connect.