When the roundtable became a workshop: the 3W Loop at Product Peak Wrocław
The plan at Product Peak Wrocław was a 20-minute talk on the 3W Loop and a roundtable. Last-minute changes killed the roundtable, so we turned the room into workshop groups and ran the loop live instead.
On 22 September I spoke at Product Peak in Wrocław about my 3W Loop framework.
The plan was simple: a 20-minute talk, then a roundtable where we would discuss the learnings together.
Then the plans changed at the last minute.
When the format falls apart
After the talk, we were supposed to move into the roundtable. Due to last-minute changes, that turned out not to be possible in the form we had planned, and we had to adapt on the spot.
So we turned the space into workshop groups and ran the 3W Loop live.
I want to write about this because the improvised version taught me something the planned one wouldn't have. A roundtable is a conversation about a framework. A workshop group is people using it. The second one is where you find out whether a framework actually holds up.
What the groups worked through
In the groups, participants practiced the three parts of the loop, one question at a time.
Where: use data analytics to find the metric issue. Not "retention is bad", but which metric, for which segment, since when. The point of Where is to stop debating opinions about the product and agree on one number that is actually off.
Why: use interviews to understand the reason. Data tells you where people drop. It almost never tells you why. That comes from talking to the people behind the number, asking about the last time it happened rather than what they would want.
Whether: scope experiments to evaluate solution ideas. Once you have a likely explanation and an idea for a fix, the question becomes how to test it as cheaply as possible, with a success criterion you write down before you run it.
The full logic of the loop, and why the order matters, is in what is the 3W Loop. The ordering argument on its own is you asked in the wrong order.
Why it survived the change of plan
A framework that only works in a prepared, two-and-a-half-hour session is not much of a framework. Real product work never gets the ideal conditions either. You get a metric that moved on a Thursday afternoon, a stakeholder asking what happened, and maybe an hour before the next meeting.
The 3W Loop held up in the improvised version for a simple reason: it is three questions, in order. You don't need a canvas or a full morning to ask where it hurts, why it happens, and whether a fix works. You need the discipline not to skip ahead to the fix.
That is the habit I care about most. The full masterclass format, five timed exercises over 150 minutes, is useful when you have the room. The three questions are useful everywhere else.
What I took from the room
It was great to share experiences and use cases, get questions from the audience, and talk to some of you during the networking afterwards.
And it was a reminder that a format going sideways is not the same as an evening going wrong. People working on something together beats people listening to me talk about it.
Thanks a lot to I DESIGN and Ocado Group for hosting the event.
If you want to run the loop with your own team, the canvas and exercises are free to use. And if you would rather run it on a real metric with someone who has facilitated it many times, that is what the Product Discovery Workshop is for.
