Focus On Delivering Priorities
We agree priorities with our customers and work to deliver in alignment with those priorities. Where there are conflicting needs we seek a mutual understanding of the need to change priorities. As our customers’ needs change we adapt our priorities accordingly so that we can still deliver the best value to our customers.
In a Nutshell
When we focus on delivering against our customers’ priorities, we are satisfying a key commitment to our customers. Our teams sustain their understanding of the customers’ priorities and how those priorities are evolving. These priorities are reflected at every level from the road map through to the work plans of the team.
Implementing Practices
Teams plan work to fill their short-term planning horizon. With a clear understanding of current priorities and the capacity of the team, work items are chosen to satisfy the forthcoming delivery goals. The team elaborates the plan as necessary to ensure that there is a shared understanding of the work that is required.
When we deliver features into a product and when we provide the services offered by that product we are making an explicit investment from our available budgets. We need to evaluate the value realised by the product, its features and services so that we can assess the return from our investments. We use the information provided by our evaluation to help guide large scale decisions on where future investments should be directed.
Teams plan work to fill their short-term planning horizon. With a clear understanding of current priorities and the capacity of the team, work items are chosen to satisfy the forthcoming delivery goals. The team elaborates the plan as necessary to ensure that there is a shared understanding of the work that is required.
Sprint Planning is a Scrum event that is held before the start of the sprint to establish the scope and priorities of the coming sprint. Its purpose is for the whole team to establish an agreed sprint goal based on the Product Owner’s view of the value that can be created for the customer. To establish a scope of backlog items that can be got to done. For each backlog item the team decides how done will be achieved.
The Product Roadmap provides a simple view of how the product will grow towards its vision. As a forward looking view, the roadmap does not set fixed priorities or deadlines. Rather it is a fluid view that evolves as our understanding of customers’ needs evolves. Roadmaps are influenced by concerns in addition to the customers’ needs. These may include our capability and capacity to deliver change and the business, financial and legal context in which our product operates.
Visualising work is a practice that reflects the agile values of openness and transparency. But what are the pitfalls we can fall into if we attach too much importance to the visualisation?