Breakthrough Thinking · Part 2
Breakthrough Thinking Meets Agile
How the seven principles can complement Scrum, Kanban and iterative software development.
Agile development is often described as a way to respond to change, deliver value in small increments and learn from feedback. Breakthrough Thinking, as described by Gerald Nadler and Shozo Hibino, offers a complementary challenge: before improving the delivery process, ask whether we are pursuing the right purpose.
A team can complete every sprint and still build the wrong thing.
That is not a criticism of Agile. It is a reminder that delivery discipline and problem framing are different skills.
Where BTT fits
Scrum organizes complex work around a product goal, a backlog, increments and inspection. Kanban makes work visible and helps teams improve flow. A sprint is not the same thing as a solution, and a full board is not proof that the customer’s real problem has been understood.
| BTT principle | How it can strengthen Agile, Scrum or Kanban |
|---|---|
| Uniqueness | Avoid assuming the same process or architecture fits every team. |
| Purposes | Express the user outcome before committing to a sprint backlog. |
| Solution-After-Next | Use a product vision to look beyond the next sprint or patch. |
| Systems | Consider product, users, operations and dependencies together. |
| Limited Information Collection | Use time-boxed spikes and experiments instead of endless analysis. |
| People Design | Use feedback, reviews and usability testing to inform decisions. |
| Betterment Timeline | Use increments, feedback and retrospectives to improve over time. |
A practical example: the feature request
Imagine a stakeholder asks for a new reporting dashboard. The team could write tickets, estimate the work and begin implementation. But the Purposes Principle asks a different question: what decision does this dashboard help someone make?
Perhaps the real need is a simple alert when a critical condition changes. In that case, a well-designed alert may serve the purpose better than a sophisticated dashboard.
Once the team understands the purpose, Agile practices become even more useful: create a small increment, test it with users, inspect the result and adapt.
Where Solution-After-Next matters
It is tempting to treat each sprint as a short-term checklist. The Solution-After-Next Principle invites us to imagine a desirable future state before selecting the next increment. That does not mean building everything now. It means avoiding today's convenient fix when it blocks tomorrow's better system.
For Pennington Labs, this is especially relevant when deciding whether a standalone tool should eventually integrate with other applications. A future vision can inform today's boundaries without turning an MVP into an enormous project.
Try this on your next project
Before adding a backlog item, write one sentence: “The purpose of this change is to help [person] accomplish [outcome].” If you cannot finish that sentence, the team may need a better question before it needs another ticket.
Next: See the seven principles applied to Instagram →
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