Think long term for lower friction
Some resources to reference when looking to resolve tensions between balancing the false dichotomy of impactful change and quality.
Something which most agile references don’t provide much guidance on (share with me any counter-examples!) is how to think about the long term. In my experience, there’s been an almost a reflexive revolt against long-term thinking, especially with the less experienced — possibly due to the fear of reverting to a fixed, ‘waterfall’ mentality.
I theorise this is because while agile practices are outcome-oriented in the sense that it seeks to put the customer at the centre through the presence of the Product owner its focus is often heavily weighted towards what to do next. The effectiveness is even more dubious this given organisations commonly relegate Product owner roles to be reduced to a proxy of diverse organisational interests.
The execution focus of agile methods anchors a lot of thinking to the near term as the assumptions that are not yet tested infer that committing to actions further into the future is inherently riskier. All of this is sensible but it doesn’t accommodate the fact our understanding of what an improved situation for a customer may be more resilient to the passing of time than solutions and execution plans are. In which case, there’s likely more value in capturing these enduring details about what success might look like into an information asset that can aid decision-making.
our understanding of what an improved situation for a customer may be more resilient to the passing of time than solutions and execution plans are.
All this is not to take a dig at the body of knowledge around agility. Agile practices are not presumed to be a cure-all and are typically used in conjunction with other practices. This is the area I believe will develop the most over the coming years - what practices to pair with agile approaches which helps build clarity amongst teams of organisation goals over different time windows and a line of sight on how these connect back to the work they are doing.
In my experience, by making goals explicit that paint a picture for all members of the organisation on what the mix of goals that we theorise will most contribute to success, we create opportunities to reconcile tensions. Take, for example, an organisation that solely focused on having functionality that would give them a unique capability in the marketplace versus one that acknowledged such a priority co-existed with some quality of the experience they were aiming to achieve for their customers. Which one is more able to resolve frictions around achieving the necessary balance? In my experience, it’s the latter.
This is not to say that we start overloading the business with too many goals - the constraint of 2-4 goals organisationally and 1-3 at a team level is best to be upheld, with less being better. The important part is understanding the relationship between goals. “Our customers value flexibility when searching, but more importantly, they appreciate speed”, “Customers want to be able to address all their banking needs via their mobile, but above all, we must maintain their trust”, etc.
In this edition of the newsletter, we cover some posts that look at the benefit of explicitly stating the outcomes we are looking to achieve over the longer term and methods for capturing this in a way we can use for alignment across the team. In my experience, the trade-offs now have an eye on the future, so destructive trade-offs are less likely.
The resources on outcome thinking
Impossible Outcomes: How Product-led Organisations Win By Changing The Game
Bruce McCarthy shares the essential elements of Product culture with examples from top companies, including the importance of goal-setting and outcomes:
https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/7b70sqa2fu
Metrics for product professionals
Steve Johnson suggests considering outcomes, outputs and activities for inspiration in what to measure as a product manager and how the linkages between each can help you think about what to do to achieve outcomes.
https://medium.com/@sjohnson717/metrics-for-product-professionals-8ab90ced98be
Thinking holistically about goals
In this publication, focus on outcomes, an earlier post shares how one can think holistically about goals and ways to avoid arbitrarily bucketing goals to the detriment of your decision-making:
https://medium.com/wioota/thinking-holistically-about-goals-57544d14c298
Gamifying OKRs
Talia Lancaster and Angie Doyle cover what makes an excellent objective and also demonstrate a game that helps teams negotiate their key results:
Jason Doherty shares how Outcomes-based roadmaps can unleash the power of a shared vision and purpose:
Outcome-based roadmaps unleash the power of a shared vision and purpose
And I cover a similar theme here:
I am Daniel Walters, an experienced product development professional with over 20 years in software product development in both practitioner and leadership roles across software development, quality, content and product management responsibilities. Most recently, I spent five years as CTO for Seek’s leading job sites in Southeast Asia (JobsDB, Jobstreet, WorkAbroad), where I was based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — my home for ten years. I now reside in Auckland, New Zealand, with my wife and 4-year-old son.