Creating a backlog that pays off
Backlogs, roadmaps are always talk-of-the tech-town. Recently that has changed a bit. With #Covid, it has obtained the seat at the table in most organisations and has expanded beyond just tech. Digital has a significant attention span from COOs and CEOs, with organisations pursuing digital capabilities for customers and employees.
This digital drive is good and not so good. I say it is good because with attention comes the focus and necessity required to fulfil the digital promise. It’s flip-side is now we are talking a lot more to people whose day jobs are not about digital. And that’s a massive task.
Traditionally tech teams created software based on the asks narrated in the documents called BRDs or specification documents. Recently with a move to agile, it shifted to user stories. Agile is a welcome change that brought a lot more user perspective and changed the software conversations to a little more human. However, the struggle is visible.
Several times this struggle leads to misinterpretations, confusions and delay. More often, people end up saying, “Hey, we thought it would be XXXX way”, “ahh, we thought this project would increase our revenue”,. and the tech team is clueless and like “, When did I become sales team? isn’t that someone else’s job?”. Here I discuss one of the ways we may be able to get a little bit better at this linking
In my experience, people usually use two phrases Business Language and Technical language. Needlessly we have many interpreters in the chain trying to ensure it translated correctly from one language to another. And in the process, translations many times purpose is lost and what gets communicated is just a task. Over time, I have seen some people never facing this problem, and they are always right in doing what is right for business in terms of outcomes. And I think the key to be in that situation is to establish a clear relationship between Why and What. This means we need to develop clear relationship Goals and backlog, i.e.
Business Goals > Technology outcome > Roadmap > Features/Stories
It pays a lot when we take some time to establish this flow at the beginning of any initiative. And once the flow is established, it’s crucial to align activities to it, and it starts with the flow of work, i.e. roadmap and backlog.
Typically we start with the ask, which is enormous and unachievable. Resources are limited; We follow it up with prioritisation. Sometimes business exec have time and then give direction. But more often, leave it to others to understand and interpret vision and sequence the work. In the absence of such linkage, chances that plans are aligned to vision-execution are limited.
And just this alignment is not enough; countless times, the software is ready, and the path to the customer is still blocked as compliance is waiting for something or market conditions have changed and so on.
So think about activities such as marketing campaigns, compliance approvals, staff training, branding, management reporting, regulator submissions, form print, customer service enablement. These make or break activities. They need to happen in a synchronised way to achieve the goal. Listing them down and making sure they are aligned to roadmaps brings a lot of stability in execution.
This blog is a conceptual foundation of aligning a roadmap to business goals and driving for successful execution to vision. In subsequent scribbles, I would cover how we go about making sure that we stay aligned and keep building on illusive value conversations for everyone.
