How to Craft Clear and Impactful Iteration & PI Objectives
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Clear goals are the foundation of any successful Agile practice. Yet, crafting effective Iteration Goals and PI Objectives often feels like a challenge. That’s why we’ve compiled practical tips to help you align your teams, drive business outcomes, and improve overall predictability.
Why Objectives Matter:
Iteration and PI Objectives are more than just summaries of work—they are commitments to deliver value. They act as a bridge, connecting business priorities with team efforts, fostering alignment, and improving engagement.
Think of them as a vital feedback loop:
1?? For Teams: Objectives provide clarity on what the business truly values, enabling teams to focus on high-priority outcomes.
2?? For Businesses: They offer a mechanism to confirm alignment between organizational goals and team efforts.
When done right, objectives act as a roadmap, guiding teams toward delivering tangible business outcomes.
Quick Tips for Writing Great Objectives:
1?? Think Beyond Tasks: Focus on outcomes, not just activities. What results will this objective achieve?
2?? Make Them SMART: Ensure objectives are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
3?? Define the Why: Connect the technical work to its business or user value. Why does this objective matter?
4?? Use Clear Language: Skip the jargon and make your objectives understandable to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Examples of Objectives That Deliver Results:
Here’s how you can transform vague objectives into ones that inspire and drive outcomes:
? Build a database.
? Create a centralized customer database to reduce resolution times by 25%.
....................................................................
? Implement Jenkins.
? Deploy Jenkins to automate testing and improve release velocity by 20%.
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Notice how the second examples clearly define the outcome, scope, and value.
The PI Objective Formula:
To simplify your approach, consider this formula:
[Activity] + [Scope] so that [Beneficiary] has [User Value] to [Business Value].
For example:
“Add three new methods of e-payment so that mobile users with digital wallets have an improved checkout experience to drive a 3% revenue increase.”
By integrating this formula, your objectives become more actionable, aligned, and impactful.
Why Well-Written Objectives Improve Performance:
Clear objectives don’t just align priorities—they enhance predictability and provide a solid framework for measuring success. At the end of each PI, Business Owners evaluate objectives based on Actual Business Value, which helps teams assess their performance. Writing objectives with clarity ensures this process runs smoothly, creating opportunities for growth and improvement.
??Agile Tip of the Week
Unfortunately, poorly written objectives can derail this alignment. Objectives that merely restate tasks—like “Build API” or “Implement Jenkins”—fail to communicate why the work matters. This disconnect often leads to frustration, misaligned priorities, and a lack of meaningful progress.
Agile Transformation Specialist (SAFe Agilist/RTE) @ Halliburton India | Project & Program Management | AI-driven innovations to enhance project execution and business outcomes.
1 个月This is just an awesome article. I see there is a connection between " Business Goals to Execution Strategy to Dysfunction and at the end including the ABV assignment in PI system demo" Well explained!
Agile Coach | Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, Design Thinking, Lean Project Management
1 个月Please give credit to the content owner from which this has been adopted. Saahil Panikar, SPCT