Advantages of the BRIDGeS Framework

Before BRIDGeS, there was no universal approach to be applied to all sorts of Subjects, apart from tossing a coin, or shaking a magic 8 ball, of course :)

To evaluate the business, you could use Lean Canvas. To focus on users’ pain, you could follow a design thinking approach. To fulfill users’ needs, you might have applied the Job-to-be-done technique.

The significant advantage of the BRIDGeS framework is that it can be used to analyze any Subject and all the context around it. The framework helps to collect meaningful data about the Subject, effectively analyze it, and make a data-driven decision optimal in terms of the current conditions (a coin or a magic ball can’t do that).

No matter if one needs to come up with a new product concept or a lacking feature; solve a strategic or operational issue; set up a new office, buy a car, or coffee table; address personal or corporate, business- or family-related matters ‒ BRIDGeS is equally efficient for all these cases.

Such versatility makes BRIDGeS a comprehensive tool for making product strategy, operational changes, day-to-day decisions, and personal conclusions.

No matter the Subject that needs to be analyzed, the BRIDGeS framework lets you get to the roots and motivations of the Subject part and see the holistic picture and the context.

All Subjects are investigated in the same way. You define the Subject’s descriptors (Benefits, Risks, Issues, Domain knowledge, and Goals) and place them on the board. Then, you prioritize all descriptors defining the most crucial, less critical, and things that have the most negligible impact.

The analysis allows you to get a deep understanding of the issue, see the comprehensive picture behind it, and handle the complexity of the context.

Getting on the same page is one of the most important things when working on a product, defining new company processes, or creating a strategy. The BRIDGeS framework allows your team to get into context from different angles and to synchronize.

When the task requires tight collaboration across different departments, BRIDGeS sessions can help people from other teams find a common language and even talk through the issues. Sessions also allow you to eliminate de-sync, which happens over time, and get a single vision.

During the BRIDGeS session, you come up with the potential Solutions and decompose them into epics and nested tasks. After that goes story mapping when you match tasks with the descriptors on the Problem Space. This way, you form your optimal Solution and ensure all aspects are taken into consideration and will be fulfilled.

As previously mentioned, BRIDGeS allows you to analyze any Subject, even the one you’ve just come up with, as a Solution to your initial problem. The process is pretty similar ‒ you consider your Solution as a Subject and define its descriptors. When you list the descriptors of 3-4 potential Solutions on one board, you get a chance to compare the BRIs of these Solutions and choose the one that meets your needs better.

BRIDGeS allows investigating every bit of data as deep as it’s necessary to help you find an optimal decision, solution, or strategy direction.

The BRIDGeS framework doesn’t operate with any complex terms and is relevantly simple compared to other frameworks. Of course, the more you practice BRIDGeS, the more you adapt it to your needs, and the better results you achieve with time. Yet, even if it’s your first BRIDGeS session, you can successfully run it once you’ve got familiar with the process description and chosen the appropriate toolset for the session.