I have collected here main pitfalls of UODP that I have hear over the time.

UODP is only about incremental changes and short term initiatives

Key idea of UODP is to work backwards from real problems that customer experiencing. It has nothing to do with amount of time or complexity of the solution. However we time to time have tendency to do a long-term project out of any problem they have at hand.  UODP allows one to solve all problems that can be solved with incremental changes quickly and focus your long running effort only where it is strictly required. Inevitably most of the problem indeed will be solved in incremental way, however this will give you an additional resources for the problems that requires quarters or years of work.

While this is one of the main problems rest of the list looks like this:

  • UODP is about incremental changes. Not it is not, it is about solving the problems. And yes, if you can solve problem that will earn you a billion, by doing incremental changes, you should do incremental changes.
  • We have this amazing tool/technology/solution, let's find the problem that it can solve for our customers.
  • I have validate the problem, therefore my solution is also validated.
  • I put word "user" in my goal and therefore now it is a user oriented goal.
  • Different user audience for validating the problem and building the product. It is very simple to pitch free product to the students and ask if they will be using it for free, it is completely different to sell same product form money to a CTO.
  • Ignoring last mile of integration.
  • Sticking to the original plan/scope while user's problems clearly have changed