When it comes to alignment I find OKRs to be a good framework. I believe prioritization should happen both before and after setting OKRs:
Before setting OKRs: you set your ambitious business goal - most likely your revenue growth target for the year, then you need to prioritize the right "opportunities". Based on the opportunities you prioritize you set your OKRs and go into execution mode. As you go into execution mode now you need to prioritize "solutions" for each opportunity, so you go through this exercise once more.
Since I have your attention, please allow me to continue to draw on your experience. Sorry =)
I frequently see that teams working maturely with a continuous delivery process get to around 80% of their Key Result before they ship the full-fledged solution prioritized beforehand.
When this happens, it is common for them to find a considerably cheaper solution to get the final 20% of the goal, which I find efficient and aligned with the purpose of the OKR framework. I'm usually happy when they decide to pivot, unless user experience is broken.
The problem is that when they know they will probably pivot along the way, they start not taking the initial prioritization exercise seriously, which affects the quality of everything that comes after, including the OKRs we set and the data we look to make pivot or persist decisions.
Is this a problem at all? Do you notice it happening too?
How do you ensure people have the freedom (or commitment?) to reassess priorities against new data but also take the initial prioritization exercise seriously?
I think the problem here would be a manager or managers that are too removed from the decision making. I always tell managers in my team that they should empower their people and give them autonomy, yet they need to keep one hand on the steering wheel. You need to intervene when something isn't going the right way, and also continuously set the bar for what is acceptable performance, and acceptable performance here means everything they have to do including taking the prioritization exercise seriously and looking at the right data etc.
People learn from consequences positive and negative, so you need to reward the right behaviour and reject the wrong behaviour.
Thanks for putting this out there! Interesting read. I recognize these behaviors to some extent in myself / my team. Agree with all the things one should not do. I would love to understand how you do solve this challenge for you / your team. Do you use a framework? If so, which one? How do you assess the individual drivers in that framework? How often do you update the list (weekly, monthly, quarterly)? If you mainly use business cases, how do you make sure the assumptions in the cases are fair and as such give an objective view of the case and how do you incorporate risk (a bet might have a great upside, but small chance of succeeding)? Would love to know how you think about these things.
@Mohannad, thank you for this article, quite intriguing. I like #2, data driven prioritization- to harness the power of data, companies need to do more.
How do you think doing it well looks like? Something like this?
Vision->Mission->Strategy (on the 3x3 time-horizons: 3 sprints, 3 quarters, 3 years)->Data->WSJF->Action->Results->Data>Repeat
I'm not a big fan of scaled agile framework, but Marty Cagan wrote it best: https://www.svpg.com/revenge-of-the-pmo/
Check my reply to Alvaro above which would give you an idea of how I see it being done well.
Good read! Thank you.
Are you using any specific framework to align and focus the whole organisation towards the current priorities?
When it comes to alignment I find OKRs to be a good framework. I believe prioritization should happen both before and after setting OKRs:
Before setting OKRs: you set your ambitious business goal - most likely your revenue growth target for the year, then you need to prioritize the right "opportunities". Based on the opportunities you prioritize you set your OKRs and go into execution mode. As you go into execution mode now you need to prioritize "solutions" for each opportunity, so you go through this exercise once more.
This is a very good related reading: https://www.producttalk.org/2016/08/opportunity-solution-tree/
Since I have your attention, please allow me to continue to draw on your experience. Sorry =)
I frequently see that teams working maturely with a continuous delivery process get to around 80% of their Key Result before they ship the full-fledged solution prioritized beforehand.
When this happens, it is common for them to find a considerably cheaper solution to get the final 20% of the goal, which I find efficient and aligned with the purpose of the OKR framework. I'm usually happy when they decide to pivot, unless user experience is broken.
The problem is that when they know they will probably pivot along the way, they start not taking the initial prioritization exercise seriously, which affects the quality of everything that comes after, including the OKRs we set and the data we look to make pivot or persist decisions.
Is this a problem at all? Do you notice it happening too?
How do you ensure people have the freedom (or commitment?) to reassess priorities against new data but also take the initial prioritization exercise seriously?
I think the problem here would be a manager or managers that are too removed from the decision making. I always tell managers in my team that they should empower their people and give them autonomy, yet they need to keep one hand on the steering wheel. You need to intervene when something isn't going the right way, and also continuously set the bar for what is acceptable performance, and acceptable performance here means everything they have to do including taking the prioritization exercise seriously and looking at the right data etc.
People learn from consequences positive and negative, so you need to reward the right behaviour and reject the wrong behaviour.
Hi Mohanned,
Thanks for putting this out there! Interesting read. I recognize these behaviors to some extent in myself / my team. Agree with all the things one should not do. I would love to understand how you do solve this challenge for you / your team. Do you use a framework? If so, which one? How do you assess the individual drivers in that framework? How often do you update the list (weekly, monthly, quarterly)? If you mainly use business cases, how do you make sure the assumptions in the cases are fair and as such give an objective view of the case and how do you incorporate risk (a bet might have a great upside, but small chance of succeeding)? Would love to know how you think about these things.
Cheers,
Nick
@Mohannad, thank you for this article, quite intriguing. I like #2, data driven prioritization- to harness the power of data, companies need to do more.