4 Things You Can Do To Make More Progress on Your Strategic Work

By Ryan Fullmer

May 22, 2022

You have important strategic goals to achieve. Your Agile teams are busy. They are working hard and getting things done. When your strategic goals aren't met, it is challenging to know what to do to get things on track.

 Here are 4 steps you can take to make more progress on the strategic work:

1. Establish an Outcome-Driven Strategy

Identify and define clear outcomes for the next year. Provide focus by narrowing in on three to five outcomes. Provide clarity by defining key measurements for success with targets. Describe the challenges that are preventing the organization from achieving the outcomes. Share the outcomes and challenges and gather feedback from your teams.

2. Set a Strategic Planning Cadence

Once you have your outcomes defined, establish a cadence for your strategic planning. Schedule meetings each quarter to review progress and make pivots. Create one to two outcomes for the quarter that will move you in the direction of your annual outcomes.

3. Align Your Teams

Help your Agile teams align to the annual and quarterly outcomes. Ensure that program, product, and project goals are supporting the strategy. Limit or stop work that is lower priority to focus efforts on the higher priority strategic work. Collaborate with the teams to provide further clarity to the outcomes. Help them identify ways to use their Sprint Goals to align to the strategic outcomes.

4. Set Targets for Strategic Work

Gather information to understand your current investment in operational and strategic work. Once you understand the current state, establish targets to where you want it to be over the next quarter. Take an incremental approach. Set realistic targets to increase the investment in the strategic outcomes. Work with the teams to develop a plan to make the shift.

Support the Transition

This won’t happen overnight. It takes time to make the transition to an outcome-driven strategy. Plan for ongoing conversations and check-in points to maintain focus on the outcomes. Address issues and impediments escalated by the teams. Keep the process collaborative and support open conversations about the outcomes.

Take the First Step

It all starts with a strategic discovery session to define the outcomes.  Click here to get the free guide "How to use discovery to focus your Agile teams on solving the right problems."