When you think of quarterly planning, what comes to mind? Epics clear and focused with a solid problem statement? Features are defined to the point where the outcomes are easily understandable and communicable?
That is what comes to mind for me. So what bad things happen when we don’t have this shared clarity? Well…
Let’s start at the beginning with a 1+ hour meeting titled “Q1 Planning Session”. We all gather to review a series of next quarter initiatives that start with an epic whose only statement is to create more products that sales people can sell to customers…
The first thing that comes to mind is, “what kind of epic is this”? The second thing that comes to mind is, “how can you already have features for this?”
Big red flag!!
What’s wrong with this picture? Let’s dissect this a little.
- Epics represent big problems we see in our space. They would typically start with a question or a problem statement along with a little data (both qualitative and quantitive) that support the problem we’re trying to solve.
- If you’ve skipped the step of defining the problem, how do we know the features supporting will actually deliver the outcomes expected?
So if don’t know the problem, how do we know we can solve it with supporting features?
Psssssstttt…. we don’t.
Flip the script
Let’s reframe this scenario in a way that could produce value and bring clarity for stream up and down:
Let’s start at the beginning with a 1+ hour meeting titled “Q1 Planning Session”. We all gather to review a series of next quarter initiatives that start with an epic that states:
“Currently, we have an aging product set that is has not increased revenue over the last (x) number of quarters. The reasons around this include competitive pressures with similar product offered cheaper as well as supporting data showing these product aren’t delivering the value metrics that our customers are looking for.
Our key results are to increase customer satisfaction by (x)% and to reduce competitive pressure against our current product set by (x)%“
What’s changed?
We have an epic that presents a clear problem we’re trying to solve for that is bigger than just one feature. We also have an epic that doesn’t come with features pre-loaded. This allows us to understand the what and the why, gives us a clear path to the metrics that refute the problem we’re trying to solve and gives us key results to aim for.
Most importantly, we are now empowered to solve a problem.