Outcome OVER Output And Why Should We Care?

Mike Pollard

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Hypothesis:

The main ingredient to team high performance and empowered decision making is a clear, measurable purpose and outcome.

The Hack day story “Humans by their nature seek purpose.” Dan Pink

3. What part of the problem will be fixed in your next release and how does it connect to the vision?

2. How will you know if the idea to solve the problem is a good idea? Is it worth the investment?

1. What problem is this team working on?

Mike’s ‘Potential for Team High Performance’ Test

• An inspiring story on a real customer issue created a call to action

• Team understand the why.

• The team tell you the success metrics.

• What they will be measuring.

• The team show you how they have broken the problem down to maximise learning

• Inspire the team with a real story

1. What problem is this team working on?

• The problem always comes first

• Get your team close to the problem

• Gather data and baseline

2. How will you know if the idea to solve the problem is a good idea? Is it worth the investment?

• Every idea you have must impact one or more of your organisation’s datapoints

• Every one of these impacted datapoints must be tracked

• Every one of these impacted datapoints must be baselined before you start working on the idea

Bonus Questions

• How do you measure a successful project / initiative?

• How do you celebrate when a project is ‘delivered’?

Delivered all the business case scope on time = value and ROI

OR

We tracked the problem datapointsafter the release and found out that they achieved the desired outcome

Tracking metrics that measure or influence output

Number of defects

Environment issues

Agile maturity

Automated test coverage

Team mood

Output is important but not as important as outcome

• Did we move the needle on the outcome datapoint?

• Is it trending where we want it to go?

• Is our desired outcome still possible?

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3. What part of the problem will be fixed in your next release and how does this connect to the vision?

• Use data to help you break down the problem?

• Ensure each sub problem/idea links to the overall outcome success metric?

Prioritise and communicate: Apollo 13 example

“NASA didn’t worry about anything other than saving the crew. The lunar landing objective was abandoned within minutes of the initial explosion. And everyone on the gigantic NASA team understood it.”

Geoff Loftus, Forbeswww.nasa.gov

Solve a problem: Apollo 13

The big picture outcome: Apollo 13Problem

3 members of our team are in a broken module in space, struggling to navigate, get power and stay alive.

Goal

Bring them back to earth - alive

Metrics

• Crew status = Alive

• Time

• Power levels

• oxygen levels

• Navigation trajectory

• Crew feedback

Success • 3 crew members back on earth• 3 crew members alive

Inspiring story

Clear baseline and desired outcome

Sub-initiative: Apollo 13 Problem

CO2 filter problem - carbon dioxide levels rising putting the crew’s life at risk.

Goal

Get oxygen level up to sustain the crew.

Metrics (baseline)

Time, oxygen levels, carbon dioxide levels. Gauge = 8, if gauge > 15 crew will blackout.

Success

Carbon dioxide level gauge < 12 and remains at <12 for the rest of the mission.

Oxygen levels > 60%

Crew life status = alive

Complete task in < 5 hours

Hypothesis 1

Round module to fit into square hole, will reduce carbon dioxide and increase oxygen level.

Large problem broken down

Success metric. A subset of vision metrics

• Scrum theory is founded on empiricism. Knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is known.

A quick note about Scrum

• Two of the pillars in scrum are inspection and adaptation

1. Understand the problem you are solving

2. Baseline, define success and stop focusing all your energy on measuring output

3. Break the problem down and be clear on how each sub-problem contributes to the overall outcome.

Summary

The main ingredient to team high performance and empowered decision making is a clear, measurable purpose and outcome.

Outcome OVER Output - and why should we care?

www.atlantive.com

Mike Pollard