Strategy - plan to achieve a larger goal

Strategy defines how an organization plans to achieve its long term vision and create significant value to all its stakeholders. Strategy can be defined at multiple levels starting from an enterprise to a portfolio and all the way for a product. The strategic plan starts with a larger vision which gives the direction which the organization takes. A set of short to medium term business goals or objectives are defined to achieve the vision. Subsequently strategic initiatives are identified and implemented to achieve the objectives and the larger vision

Vision captures the strategic intent of an enterprise or a portfolio. It provides the long term direction which the organization or the portfolio needs to take to achieve its business goals. Agile teams use different practices and templates like business model canvas, lean canvas etc. to capture and manage the enterprise / portfolio vision and the associated strategy.

Vision Functions

Product Vision Board

Vision Board Function helps the teams to describe, visualize and validate their product strategy in the form of a visual canvas

• Visualize the product vision and strategy on a canvas Describe different components of the product strategy Extend the canvas with additional components as new cards Customize and reorder the board to suit your specific needs

Business Model Canvas

Business Model Canvas Function helps the teams to document the business model of an enterprise in the form of a visual canvas

• Visualize the enterprise business model on a canvas Describe different components of the business model Extend the canvas with additional components as new cards Customize and reorder the board to suit your specific needs

Lean Canvas

Lean Canvas Function helps the teams to document the business plan of a lean enterprise in the form of a visual canvas

• Visualize the lean enterprise business plan on a canvas Describe different components of the business plan Extend the canvas with additional components as new cards Customize and reorder the board to suit your specific needs

Objectives

Objectives are short to medium term business and product goals that must be achieved by a specified timeline. Objectives help product teams to align their work towards the business and product goals.

Define

Objectives are defined using a brief title, description and a set of key metrics that helps to define the goals using quantifiable parameters. It is recommended to have 3 to 4 key metrics for each objective. One or more Initiatives and associated product backlog are identified to achieving each objective.

Measure

Initiatives and other backlog items associated with the objectives are planned and delivered as part of multiple release and iteration schedules. Business and product management teams continuously log the results against the key metrics and determine if the delivered items help achieve the goal.

Objectives Functions

Objectives

Objectives Function helps the teams to define and track a set of product and business objectives using OKR (Objectives and Key Results Framework)

• Define short and medium term business and product objectives Define key results with measurable targets Identify initiatives and backlog items to achieve the objectives Log results against each key results periodically Track progress of the objectives and individual key results against targets

Objective Attributes

An Initiative is a container for solution development effort large enough to require analysis, a light weight business case and financial approval before implementation. Initiatives forms the root of the backlog hierarchy and contains sub-initiatives, capabilities and features as child items.

Grooming

Initiatives are refined as a part of the backlog refinement process in which the initiatives are sufficiently detailed with acceptance criteria, business value, benefits and a light weight business case. They are further broken down to multiple smaller chunks of module called sub-initiatives / capabilities or features. During the refinement process initiative will go through multiple stages before they can considered Ready for implementation.

Initiatives can be continuously ranked based on business value or any other attribute deemed fit by the portfolio or business owner teams. At any point in time initiatives can be either ranked up or down depending on the changing business needs. The top ranked initiatives are always picked for implementation during the planning process and helps the team to deliver the most important initiative and provide the highest value to its customers.

Planning and Delivery

Initiatives are large solution development effort and cannot fit into a single release schedule. Also they follow a lean start-up build-measure-learn cycle where initiatives are realized incrementally by defining the MVP and continuously evaluated for business outcomes.

When the initiatives are marked as Ready its child capabilities and features are pushed into the product backlog and are available for planning in the release schedules. Based on the available capacity teams pull top features or capabilities from different Ready initiatives and plan them into the release schedule.

Evaluation

Initiatives are continuously evaluated and decisions are made to pivot (stop and move to alternate options) or persevere (continue) or mark an initiative as done based on the outcome and goals met.

Unlike other backlog items like capability / feature or a story not all child items needs to be done for the initiative to be marked as done. Once the initiative achieves its stated goal it can be marked as done.

Initiative Functions

Initiatives

Initiatives Function helps the teams to manage the list of all key initiatives of a product

• Capture information about an initiative like title, description, benefits etc. Estimate the size of an initiative using configurable units Rank the initiative and create a prioritized list Breakdown initiative into one or more features Manage the progress of an initiative using configurable statuses Pivot or persevere an initiative based on defined goals

Initiatives Attributes and Relationships