Value Streams - Notes on Planning with OKR’s

TL;DR: Planning is hard, what is helping lately is to zero down on identifying value streams, ascribing a metric and then asking disqualifying statements when you are unbundling your OKRs.?

OKR : Rocky Road

I have greatly struggled with OKRs. It all sounds great when you read the literature, but the practice has been challenging. Though, as a practitioner of patterns, following the framework and the sprit of the pattern is key

We have a large team and un-bundling the top level OKR’s into the team level KR’s and so on, has not been the most straightforward. The key sticking point has been an obsession about finding a first class metric that each team must take and show improvement on. This is hard.?

Building group muscle to focus on themes (objectives) versus projects has taken time. For a new team, that has a mix of process experience, added with skepticism of the “new” process, the execution has taken time.?

Resilience is key, dogma is not. Constantly re-iterating the themes and pushing the group to think metrics first, versus project first, was the big hurdle.?

In hindsight, perhaps a coach led approach would have worked better to ease the group into the process, versus exposing the planning process to learning curves of the group.?

Focus on Initiatives, Not Projects

Much of our time was spent in steering team members away from “projects”. If we’re aligned with a metric, and pick something to accomplish in a quarter, then we pick the work that gets us closer to achieving that metric. If we simply have a sequence of projects that we think about, then we stop to ask whether that is getting us closer to the objective, especially in a dynamic marketplace where things change rapidly. This is also a mind-set change that helps to build focus when you’re planning. In fact, not talking at the top level planning about how something will happen, is empowering and takes away the importance we ascribe to “projects”. ?

Value Streams

What has helped immensely is to start with your objectives, then devolve them into value streams, each of which has ONE metric associated with it, and yes, it’s super hard to pick one, or even find one, but the persistence pays off. Often, just the identification of the metric is a light bulb moment.?

Once the value streams are identified with their metrics, you can go about asking what sub-orgs will participate in delivering these streams and the process is hugely satisfying since it at least sets you up with a shot at goal.?

Using the value metric as a disqualifier to refuse work will also reinforce whether you’ve picked the right metric & value stream.

Value Score

A sub-text to all this planning mechanics is productivity. Tying the work that is performed to value streams, therefore, then allows us to compute a value score, which could be hours, or units of work, whatever you use.?

Value Score = units_expended_on_value_stream / units_expended

Great smell test to figure if you’re working on the right stuff, and super proxy to debt and gaps in operational excellence.?

Value Driven Org Design

Org design is a key skill that a technical leader should build on.?My preferred pattern has evolved to setting sub-teams up around customer funnels, which helps to align with value streams and ultimately gives each group a sharper focus on the work at hand.?

Recent workshops have all started with a team “call-to-arms” ,?customer identification, their lifecycle, the value streams therein, that flow from the top level objectives, their value metrics, and tying it all up with the group that will go deliver that value.?

Rounding Off?

Planning , dependency identification, value streams and finally execution are a beast. While tooling exists, there is value in obsessing about the spirit of the framework you choose, learning the basics and then harnessing the goodness that a tool provides.?

Looking for value streams, their metrics and tying it back to execution and delivery has been a big unlock recently and groups are able to have sharper conversations, which is always super valuable.?