Alignment to strategic outcomes is critical for any organisation. Without such focus they are unlikely to achieve ambitious goals and be leaders in their respective fields. Scrum teams align to the Product Goal to ensure delivery towards higher objectives.
The Product Goal describes a future state of the product can serve as a target from the Scrum team to plan against. A product is a vehicle to deliver value. It has a clear boundary, known stakeholders, well-defined users or customers. A product could be a service, a physical product, or something more abstract. [1]
Example products:
The Product Goal is the objective flag post that teams work toward. It is considered when selecting work in Sprint Planning.
Evidence-Based Management (EBM) is an empirical approach that helps organisations to continuously improve customer outcomes, organisational capabilities, and business results under conditions of uncertainty. It provides a framework for organisations to immprove their ability to deliver value in an uncertain world, seeking a path toward strategic goals. [2] The model consists of the following key elements:
Organisations set goals and create experiments (improvement ideas) in order to work towards intermediate goals. The goal setting follows a systematic approach. The framework is closely related to the Toyota Kata. [3]
During Sprint Planning, the team selects items from the Product Backlog that, for this Sprint, will contribute the highest value to the Product Goal. How do you know these items will help the team achieve the Product Goal? Value metrics are key.
In Sprint Planning
Useful EBM metrics to consider for existing products include:
EBM metrics to consider for new products include:
The Sprint Review provides a unique opportunity to inspect steps toward objectives by assessing movements in the EBM measures.
Key questions
Have the metrics improved? If not, are they the right metrics? Do we need to choose other metrics? If not, do we have the right initiative? Do we need to change, adjust, or pivot to a new initiative?
Sprint Review provides the opporunity to engage strategic stakeholders with the following:
When an adaptation to an Initiative is required, the engagement with stakeholders at Sprint Review creates a feedback loops to discuss the impacts of changing part of the whole the Initiative, particularly where budget and previous forecasts of roadmap delivery is concerned, and adapt execution immediately next Sprint.Â
1. Sutherland, J. & Schwaber, K. (2020) The 2020 Scrum Guide (TM). https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html
2. Scrum.org (2020) Evidence-Based Management Guide. https://www.scrum.org/resources/evidence-based-management-guide
3. Rother, M. The Improvement Kata. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother/The_Improvement_Kata.html
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