Focus on Business Outcomes and Objectives
Why should we care about PI Objectives and how do we write them to quantify business value?
Why do we want to quantify business value? Easy question but sometimes hard to put in words. Effectively quantifying the business value invites conversations between IT and business. It also encourages learning and facilitates trade off decisions in approach.
Yet, most importantly, it enables a key Agile Metric --- Program Predictability.
Program Predictability is a way to measure an ART’s ability to plan and execute against plans. It brings central continuous improvement and builds trust across the train and teams.
PI Objectives drive Program Predictability. The focus of PI Objectives is to:
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PI Objectives should be part of the planning process and demonstrate evolution of the work. Remember focus on outcomes. Finishing the feature shouldn’t be the goal.
How to write PI Objectives
PI objectives should be SMART! To write SMART PI Objectives be sure to include:
- Action – What is the action you are doing? Use a verb
- What - What is the thing being acted on? Use a noun
- Who – Who is the audience that you are delivering this awesome value to?
- User Value – What is the benefit to the user?
- Business Value – What is the benefit to the business overall?
Effective PI Objective Examples
In a nutshell, PI Objectives are a key element to understanding and focusing on the important stuff. They help focus alignment on outcomes rather than process and summarize data into meaningful and steerable information. By doing so, ARTs can create a shared understanding of what Business Value means to the business.