You are building something that consistently:
- Provides clear vision and direction
- Develops capabilities to add or enhance the experience
- Delivers tangible value to the business and its customers
Why would anybody ever want a situation like that to end? Unfortunately, so many products don’t have these things which has a consistently negative impact on a team instead; causing them to feel rudderless and never really seeing impact from their effort as just keeps going unless either they leave or move onto another project. Being done is the ultimate measure of success and accomplishment.
Incremental and iterative
Teams have concerns that they will never be done and in many cases there are valid causes of that concern. Incremental value delivery and iterative development practices are great tools, really structure, to ensure that a team is given the opportunity to reassess and validate their path. Course correcting if needed. Without a mission, vision to get there, and a plan, these structures just start to represent frustration.
- Teams feel like these structures don’t offer them any safety; just get the work done and don’t waste my time
- Stakeholders feel like these structures are bloat; just get the work done and don’t waste the team’s time
Frustration leads to loss of motivation and productivity; sliding further down the spiral. Having a way to show everyone what the intentions are and the progress made is really important.
Show value and progress through OKRs
Objectives and Key Results are a goals framework that focuses are what you are trying to achieve, what are the steps to get there, and how can you prove you are there through measurable outcomes.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will what you work on. There are many different flavors of OKR, but they should all fit within this construct:
I will <Objective> as measured by <Key Result(s)>
An example of an OKR is as follows:
- Allow users to complete all transactions from the website
- Make all primary transactions available within the next two months
- Make all secondary transactions withing the next three months
It is important that OKRs are SMART:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achieveable (even if a stretch)
- Relevant
- Time-bound (ideally nothing longer than three months)
OKRs are a great foundation for what lands in a backlog of work and its prioritization. Combining them with a backlog as a consistent way to communicate how everything is going will build confidence that the path is correct.
Milestones for the soundbyte culture
Sometimes these artifacts can be a little cumbersome. Milestones can summarize direction and progress can help explain and also motivate.
All transactions are able to completed from the website
When this milestone is hit, team has clarity in their accomplishment, stakeholders and users know what they have been delivered, and everyone is happy all the way around.
So, it’s great to never be done as long as you are working on something that is being driven by a clear mission and vision along with a set of capabilities that deliver instrinic value. Constant assessment and validation ensures that you are going that along with published objectives and key results that show everyone the right path is being taken and you are making your way down it using milestones when you want to simplify the message while still motivating.