The Unfolding
Shifting from static artifacts to work that unfolds over time
Summary
Product development is not best understood as a collection of fixed artifacts moving through fixed stages. It is better understood as something unfolding over time.
We tend to model software product development as a collection of things, passed across a fixed set of stages: goals, initiatives, epics, tickets.
But the work does not behave that way. It unfolds.
Discovery overlaps with delivery. Feedback reshapes priorities. What we are building, and why, changes as we learn.
The process does not just move forward. It changes as it progresses.
Even the context needed to understand the work is not fixed. It is produced through interaction, through the back-and-forth of people working through the situation together.
This requires a different orientation. Instead of organizing around static artifacts, we focus on what is unfolding over time. Instead of fixed stages, we look at loops, interactions, and shifts in state.
The goal is not to remove structure, but to use it in a way that stays closer to reality. To support learning, not mask it. To make work more legible without flattening it. To build representations that evolve with the system they describe.