Actualization of vision and plans by CPE

Actualization of vision and plans.

This is all what needs to be done! Can you
do it?

‘Absolutely‘ the teams affirm. A couple of month later half the stuff is still not done and will never be done. People re scope, point fingers, find reasons but it doesn’t change the fact: It was not hold what was promised.

Very often we know that we can’t do it, but what do you answer if they say: ‘This must be done‘ and your lifeline is supported by them paying you for doing that. It is fascinating that today, we are aware of the fallacy and leaders are encouraging the teams to say the truth ‘if it is possible’ but still, we had several years in a row of not even actualizing more than 50% of our committed plans.

I went on a mission with the question:

How can we commit what we can deliver what
we promised, not more, nor less?

I imagined that this would change our perception of ourselves as heroes and winners instead of stressed looser who are never enough. I believed this would foster a great culture of confidence, where we are happy and fulfilled including our stakeholders who are happy about our promises being fulfilled and the fun cooperation, they have with us.

In order to validate this, we followed up on

• key objectives formulated SMART actualised more than 80% within committed time
• Iterative deliveries formulated as Features actualised more than 80% within committed time
• Culture indicators by surveys and retrospectives reporting more joyous and engaged cultured

What did we do to plan more realistically?

We are organised as a SAFe Agile Release train and plan in cadenced events, namely PI planning every 12 weeks and the teams in 2 weeks iterations.

In preparation to those events and in our execution of those ceremonies we raised our standard in a couple of practices.

Sharper and clearer statement of our intent in Features and including the teams, people who do the work, before hand to get an understanding of the viability and find ways to cut the core.

Clear expression of the vision; we want to be to most fun train to work with, delivering on our promises.

Planned in PI planning with a buffer of 1,5 iterations.

Iterative pulling items of delivery from on common backlog in priority order as one big-team.

Team presenting and reviewing other team’s plans.

Our product accountable consciously focusing on less to ensure focus.

During execution we spend more effort in visualizing our boundary objects of work and following them up.

We introduced “you decide Fridays”, where people planned to be free, so they could choose between innovation, learning or backlog work.

What did we learn?

In the first time in years, we managed 100% of our objectives in one 3-month cadence. The feeling of joy is radiating in every team member including externally partners. People want to join us, and stakeholders celebrate us. We actualised also more than 80% of our Features, the first time ever and released as never before. We released in one sprint, as we did a year back in 3 months.

Our culture changed to empowered actors, courageously speaking true to power and each other. We involve everyone in our creation and the buffers give us space to tackle the challenges which come in a complicated or even complex environment.

I am personally touched by seeing how we feel better about our life’s and work.

We came a long why and there is still some way to go, as we for example were stressed and needed to work a weekend to make this happen. We didn’t spend enough time on systematically improving ourselves and our system, which resulted in a lot of distractions and pain. The most of our deliveries are done in big chunks and there is much value and de-risking to gain by actualizing the big chunk partially earlier by cutting it in smaller pieces.

Now we will take a breath, celebrate and then make it even more fun for us and everyone around us!