Seen this many times. Feels good, but the feeling doesn’t last, and it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem. In fact, it prolongs the problem, which is a bit sad.
Firstly, let’s understand the motivation.
The problem
The team is overloaded. They’ve been working on a few really important things, and (surprise, surprise) those have turned out to be more complex than we initially imagined (back when we knew almost nothing about them). So everyone is a bit tired and grumpy about that, even if they’re actually going as well as can reasonably be expected.
As you get toward the end of one thing, the next thing starts coming at the team – often because the Project Manager or Stream Lead is only responsible or (even worse) accountable, for their thing, not the stuff you’re still toiling on.
So of course, the new thing is getting shoe-horned in, and that’s just making everyone even more grumpy. Someone then thinks, “Can’t they see that we’ve got so much on we just can’t do it all?”. What we need is a single prioritised list! That’ll force them to make the decisions about what we don’t do and will help us focus.
The false friend solution
So a list get’s written up. It’s often a brain dump, lots of stuff that’s been floating around in people’s heads for ages, but this list basically starts from scratch and is generated by one or two manager types.
It’s a big list! And they’re all great things! Now we just need to put the Exec team in a room for an hour and get them to prioritise them! Then we can focus. Then we’ll not get all the disruptions and distractions, new projects kicking off and we’ll get to finish stuff. It’s gonna be great.
Three issues
Firstly, you’ve disenfranchised the teams who are closest to these problems in coming up with the list. If you want your organisation to learn “Product”, then you’re going to want the Product folks to be capturing, stewarding and refining the list of options, and in turn, for them to pull these things together in close collaboration with their squads who are actually going to do the work, develop the solutions, deliver the product improvements. Whilst your motivations are good, and your heart may be in the right place you’ve inadvertantly done the same thing that the PMO or others are doing.
Secondly, this wish-list, even if it’s got broad themes or lined up to “outcomes” tends to be disconnected from the capacity to deliver change, which is the scarcity you’re trying to optimise around. So what happens when the Exec team then says “OK, of that list of 47 things, these 5 are our top priority”? What are the chances that those 5 are nicely decoupled and can be done independently by 5 different squads? Almost never. Product Development is not like shopping in a supermarket with a tight budget, there is a very real scarcity in supply to also deal with.
Thirdly, this is not a repeatable solution. It’s not a one-off problem. It’s recurring. Which means it needs a repeatable method of effectively sifting through options and lining those up against scarce capacity in a way that doesn’t overload squads and does a good job of managing the continuous flow of good or great ideas that you simply don’t have the capacity to do all of them. Are you going to come up with a fresh list every few months and try to wipe the slate clean and focus on the new “top-five” or whatever comes down?
So, unfortunately this won’t work, at least not sustainably, or in a way that grows the sort of product-oriented culture you want. Instead, focus on having your Exec team engage with a repeatable method of raising ideas and having those broken down in a sustainable, just-in-time way. It needs to be closely connected to the precious capacity you’re trying to optimise for, i.e. it needs to be squad oriented. I’d recommend a Roadmap per squad as the mechanism for this. And lastly, it needs to be a method that empowers those squads to own and steward not just the delivery of improvements, but the process of selection itself, all the way through to owning the quality in production.
The repeatable method I would recommend is the Quarterly Look Ahead (QLA) process. A quarterly engagement with Stakeholders, updating the Roadmaps (one per Squad) with any new strategic imperatives or OKRs, GEMS or whatever, with a way of sustainably breaking big things down by Squads and across squads for development. I’ve attempted to write up how the QLA fit in to the general “Heartbeat” here.
Of course, I’ve written about this before, and had a chat with John Cutler on the topic. Always fun chatting with John.
As always, YMMV. All the best out there!