January ’22 – Important lessons learnt

Sharing some outputs from a retrospective session this week [When I say this week, I wrote this in January but forgot to press publish until August 🤯]:

  1. We experienced difficulty adopting OKRs as the mechanism of identifying, tracking and measuring success. The ‘why’ was unclear. KRs included external dependencies that the team did not have control over 🚩
  2. Hedge educated bets vs upfront planning — An architectural roadmap will help identify opportunities + leverage potential value. Determine criteria to build for reuse vs build product-specific functionality.
  3. Introduce lightweight governance! Multiple steering groups and forums are time consuming and the enemy of delivering anything at pace. Give teams the autonomy to make decisions and communicate but also give them the clarity of escalation routes.
  4. Be clear about strategic priorities and how initiatives link to this + move organisation forward. The absence of this makes prioritisation and motivation difficult 🚩
  5. Benefits definition and realisation. These should be co-owned by business stakeholders and service teams. Work collaboratively rather than in siloes, have regular feedback loops, communication should be bi-directional, people should feel empowered.
  6. Give yourself extra time to navigate a difficult recruitment environment and complex procurement processes. Also, supplier/contract management is key — How can we foster a positive relationship with suppliers but also make sure we are getting quality and value for money
  7. Think long-term. Life beyond ‘done’. What does continuous improvement of the product or service look like? Impact on operational/business teams? Does this include decommissioning? What is the total life cost?