The Scrappy Wedge for Unglamorous Investment
Win backing for unsexy work by starting small, showing it visually, making it easy for others, and proving momentum.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
A method for getting investment in important-but-unglamorous work (usability, quality, tech debt) that doesn't naturally attract funding. Start small so it's a low-risk bet, make the pain and the fix visceral with demos and customer video, remove the cost for dependent teams, back it with hard data, then ship visibly and compound the momentum into more investment.
Origin
Megan Cook's approach to funding a customer-satisfaction (CSAT) / usability initiative at Atlassian.
Core principles
- 01Small starts read as small bets, which are easier to approve
- 02Show, don't tell — demos and customer video carry the emotional case
- 03Remove the cost for the teams you depend on and they'll say yes
- 04Data connects unglamorous work to revenue and credibility
- 05Early visible wins are the inroad to larger investment
How to run it
- 1
Gather the evidence and connect it to the business
Mine surveys with written-in reasons, customer conversations, and logic linking the problem to outcomes (e.g. poor usability lengthens ramp-up, hurting new-customer acquisition and expansion).
Pro tip Rich 'why' feedback and painful-to-watch customer struggles zero you in on the few root causes.
- 2
Start small with a testable hypothesis
Scope a cheap, high-impact slice rather than a big program, so success can be shown before asking for more.
Pro tip A small start doesn't feel like a big bet, which is exactly why it gets approved.
- 3
Make it easy for the teams you depend on
Instead of asking dependent platform teams to bear development cost, design a low-cost way for them to help — e.g. each nominates a 'shepherd' to review changes and designs.
Pro tip Aligning three or four roadmaps to line up perfectly is basically impossible — find the cheap collaboration path instead.
Watch out Trying to synchronize many teams' roadmaps for one improvement will stall the whole thing.
- 4
Show, don't tell
Bring the initial experience, the pain, and a video of a customer struggling, then the vastly better new experience, to create emotional buy-in.
Pro tip Cook's design lead Charlie Sutton's mantra 'show don't tell' — a demo that cuts 20 clicks sells itself.
- 5
Ship small, keep momentum, compound
Bring in a modest team (~40 people), keep shipments small and frequent, publish regular updates, and let wins fund the next round of investment.
Pro tip Positive customer feedback ('best quality-of-life improvement in a long time') keeps the team and stakeholders energized.
In the wild
Asked by the chief experience officer to improve CSAT, Cook found usability was a core driver but it wasn't shiny enough to easily fund. She used rich survey feedback and customer calls, tied usability to acquisition and expansion revenue, got dependent teams to assign shepherds instead of funding full dev work, demoed the pain and the fix with customer video, and started small.
→ She secured investment, brought in about 40 people, shipped steadily (including a well-overdue dark mode), and earned customer praise like the 'best quality of life improvement they've seen in a long time.'
Common mistakes
Assuming you have no power to start it
Many PMs assume they can only do what they're told; in reality they have more agency than they think to start scrappy work that needs doing.
Asking for a big investment up front
A large ask reads as a large bet and invites rejection; a small scrappy start proves the direction can pay off and unlocks more later.
Is it for you?
Best for
PMs championing important but unglamorous quality/usability/reliability work that won't get top-down funding
Not ideal for
Initiatives that genuinely require large coordinated investment from day one and can't be sliced small
From the transcript
“I think if you have a hypothesis and you can start small, you can get that investment more easily, you can show success, you can…”
“we worked together to find”
“show don't tell”
“each of those teams put forward like we called them a shepherd”
“when you keep it scrappy and small in the beginning, it doesn't feel like it's as big of a bet”
From the episode
Lessons from Atlassian: Launching new products, getting buy-in, and staying ahead of the competition
Megan Cook (head of product, Jira)