Susan, an experienced senior leader, wondered what to do. Her company's market was on a roller coaster. Increased revenue meant a lot more customers, who clamored for more features. So, the product leaders pressured the teams to deliver faster.
But she'd been in a roller coaster situation before. After two years of stupendous growth, revenue leveled off in just one quarter. Then, revenue plunged back to the previous levels before the growth. But, that company had already overhired, even while revenue remained flat. To manage expenses, they'd laid off some terrific people. She didn't want to do that again.
Whether it was success or failure, the future remained too unpredictable. Gantt charts or long roadmaps were pipe dreams. Beautiful, but the organization was unlikely to ever deliver on those plans. She needed more insight. What could she do?
Visualize Immediate Real Data
As Susan's trusted advisor, I recommended she focus on seeing the immediate and real data more often. We used the metaphor of not overdriving her headlights.
If you've ever driven on a dark night on a curvy road, your headlights only show you this immediate part of the road. Your headlights cannot see around curves, so you can't plan far into the future. What happens when you hit the next curve, especially if the road is icy? You have to replan and fast. Long intricate plans don't allow for fast replanning.
However, organizations have access to real data that can offer immediate insights. The faster you can see the right trend data, the faster you can use those insights to make better decisions. You might not avoid the next curve, but you can manage through it better.
The trick is which data the leader needs and how often.
Susan had already moved from weekly to daily business reports for customer metrics and revenue trends. In addition, I suggested she monitor her internal feedback loop durations:
- Each team's cycle time to the next demo. We normally think of cycle time for features, but demos were equally as important here. With more frequent demos, everyone could see the reality of the product's progress. That would allow people to stop adding features when there was no more value in the backlog.
- Demo cycle time allowed the product leaders to change the product strategy to change any team's backlog. The faster the teams demo'd, the faster the product leaders could change the product strategy.
- Given those two feedback loops, she could choose the cycle time that made sense for rethinking the project portfolio. That's the organization strategy cycle time.
Those three feedback loops could inform Susan's future decisions, and the speed at which she needed to make them. We started with the team feedback loops because the time to each demo gated all the other decisions. No one can change any strategy faster than the teams can deliver.
See the Team Feedback Loops with Cycle Time and Throughput
I wrote about flow metrics in the a previous newsletter, Flow Metrics and Why They Matter to Teams and Managers. Since Susan wanted to make decisions frequently and fast, she asked each team to measure their cycle time. She explained her request this way:
“I suspect our business will fluctuate a lot this year, so I will need to make decisions and then change them. Since you folks deliver the features so I can make decisions, I need to know something about your cycle time, specifically for showing demos. If you complete a feature every day, but only demo once a week, please demo more frequently.
“If your cycle time between possible demos tends to be longer than three days, let me know what (or who) you need to reduce that cycle time. Or, if you have fluctuating, unpredictable cycle times, tell me what you need to achieve a regular cycle time of three days or less.”
Susan chose three days for this reason: With a regular cadence of delivery every three days, teams delivered something of value once or twice a week. Susan thought that level of throughput offered her enough data to make and revisit decisions.
Many teams already had regular cycle times of two to four days. They focused on right-sizing their work and improved collaboration to finish their work faster. And every team chose to demo more often.
When Feedback Loop Duration Offers Insights
However, three teams had very irregular cycle times. Every so often, they could demo daily. But more often, they could demo only once every two weeks. And one team sometimes needed six weeks to demo something they completed. Because these cycle times were unpredictable, Susan asked those teams to investigate and explain what they needed to make their cycle times more regular and demo something at least a couple of times a week.
After retrospectives, each of these teams explained they had a ton of old work (high aging and high WIP). Because there was so much WIP, the product leaders fell into the trap of asking people to work alone. That kept the WIP high and the throughput low, aside from increasing their cycle time.
Susan first worked with their product leaders to reduce the work, and then asked the teams to collaborate to smooth their cycle time and demo more often. While everyone realized their changes would take time, the teams said they would try to create a regular weekly cadence of demos and then move to more frequent demos.
Lower Cycle Time and Higher Throughput Made Smaller Predictions Possible
More frequent demos and more immediate flow metrics trend data offered everyone more opportunity to change their plans. That's when Susan introduced the idea of overarching goals, both for the organization and the products.
Overarching goals didn't cascade down to stories. Instead, the goals offered everyone guidance about where to make small adjustments to the backlogs, as well as the various product and organization strategies.
Susan's company's market is still quite volatile. However, they appear to be more stable than their competitors. Susan and I are now working on the challenges of reducing the various strategy-based cycle time decisions.
In a volatile market, we don't need long and intricate plans. Most of us need to know our direction (those overarching goals), the decisions we need to make now, and the data we need for the next decision. Then, we need the courage to make that decision at just the right time. (That's tricky!) And in a more stable market, you can take the time to generate ideas to open new markets and experiment, using flow metrics to guide your next decision.
None of us can know what the future will bring. When we limit our long-term planning, we can avoid overdriving our headlights. Instead, create big goals, choose the next deliverables, and gather the data you will need for the next good decisions. That will allow you to create a little prediction without long and intricate plans.
This newsletter touches on topics in Practical Ways to Lead an Innovative Organization, Successful Independent Consulting: Relationships That Focus on Mutual Benefit, and Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility.
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Pragmatic Manager: Vol 21, #3, ISSN: 2164-1196