The HSM

The HSM  (Holy sh*t Moment or High Stakes Message)

We define a Holy S**T Moment, or High Stakes Message if you prefer, as that customer experience or EVENT (we will come back to this word) in using your software that truly surprises and changes their perception of what was possible. These are tough to deliver and always end up being subtly different from the brilliant idea you had in your bath…as you iterate and explore. The IOTA model can be used to describe the HSM (as a capability) and provide a focus on the high level hypotheses and tests on which the idea of the HSM is based. Perhaps we thought that budgeting would be a HSM for our customers but it turns out that discovering how much money they can save by declining transactions was the HSM. Having a clear focus on an HSM though, which you test after every sprint, is critical though because you can very easily slip into the detail of sprint planning while making massive assumptions about the overall impact of the collected features on your customer. In the end therefore you review your sprint IOTA and your 3 month IOTA regularly. This approach works well together with Jeff Patton’s Story Mapping if you need the additional structure.