Throughout an Expedition project it is important to consider how the project is going and to ask whether it is on a course to success. We define success as: Artisans and team are evaluating the viability of each proposed Discovery and successfully communicating these to the client. Each proposed Discovery is vetted and deemed worth pursuing or discarded with an explanation as to why it is not viable.
Success in an Expedition doesn’t always feel like success. Depending on the client, it can be frustrating to deliver an honest assessment. However, artisans should feel as if they’ve done their best to be expert and direct with the client to communicate uncomfortable truths, even if the client is not receptive to constructive feedback. Artisans’ value is to advocate for their unbiased technical convictions.
A successful Expedition should produce lots and lots of artifacts. There should be an artifact for almost, if not every, task in the project. These should be presented to the client during weekly iteration reviews to show the Expedition progress and spark conversations, during which we should be communicating our findings (even if the results aren’t what the client wants to hear). The final deliverable of an Expedition project should be an easily consumable compilation of artifacts (i.e., a slide-deck) as well as Discovery proposals that the client can choose to pursue further if they find the Solution Concept to be worth the investment.