Key considerations around Execution
Execution is the coal-face of delivery where multiple teams collaboratively deliver the items on your roadmap. Without these teams, nothing gets delivered! Given this is the engine room, having all aspects running smoothly can have the biggest impact, positively or negatively, if direction, alignment and clarity aren’t in place.
Execution is a key component to an organisation’s success as it:
Delivers the products, or improvements, the business sells or delivers
Is a key factor in revenue generation and client retention
Sets the speed of everything else that happens in the organisation
Contains the opportunity to learn more about customers (value) than anywhere else.
Five key aspects
Key aspects to consider when assessing the health of your roadmap are whether it has/is:
Process adherence
Skills exist in teams
Tools in place
Leading/lagging reporting
Translation of output to strategy
Process adherence is important for predictability, consistency and reliability. Having all the processes and associated RACI defined, everyone trained on this, and adherence made a priority to ensure all are following them delivers those factors.
Good looks like having all processes documented in a central location which people can refer to, including the steps in the process, ownership, RACI, associated tooling and gate checks.
Without process adherence aspects such as shadow IT, delivery delays and risk to quality on outputs can occur.
As part of processes you have your RACI, putting responsibility on different team members. Ensuring the skills in teams exist to be able to effectively deliver, and more importantly manage when things aren’t as expected, is critical to success.
Good looks like having all roles, job description and responsibilities documented, aligned and understood with the skills to deliver verified across delivery and supporting roles.
Without these skills in teams, you never know what you’ll get. Outputs can be of too lower quality, blatantly wrong, delayed or handed off to others to protect. Too often people are promoted into incompetence which has its own impacts to culture, success and delivery.
Having tools in place is important to ensure that teams have what they need to do the job effectively. There are levels of ‘in place’ when considering tool complexity, automations and integration.
Good looks like having the required tools in place, actively used by the teams and their purpose is well defined. Bonus points for integrations between tools to increase efficiencies and data accuracy, and for automation where appropriate.
Without tools in place, or rather, working off email, excel or other tools that likely aren’t fit for purpose, large amounts of efficiency is lost, information harder to access and align, reporting more complex if not impossible and other challenges in delivery on the day to day.
Leading/lagging reporting is important for proactive management on delivery to minimise risks and delays. Leading and lagging factors highlight the likelihood of delays based on preparedness, and aspects that are lagging behind what’s expected.
Good looks like having the relevant reporting in place and, ideally, automated. The reporting would be tracking the identified leading and lagging metrics required for the proactive decision making it enables.
Without leading/lagging reporting management of delivery often becomes reactive rather than proactive, with all the associated delays, urgency and other factors that become part of that - none of which are positive for the business or the teams delivering.
Translation of output to strategy is important to help the teams understand how what they deliver connects to and enables the overall roadmap and strategy. Actively and visually linking the outcomes through to the strategy can provide a very real sense of purpose, valuable insights for decision making and ensuring teams are on track.
Good looks like the teams having an understanding of their value and importance of how what they’re delivering connects to the strategy and highlights their contribution to the overall business.
Without this translation and association back to strategy it can affect the team’s sense of value and in turn the quality and dedication. It can also cause distraction, misalignment and poor decisions based on limited information.
Common challenges
Some key common challenges that can occur are:
Not documenting the process; not only is the process useful for the business and new starters, you will often find that having these defined processes adds a lot of value for managing different personality types
Unexpected and ongoing delays; through poor reporting/transparency, decisions being made late due to reactivity and other aspects
Disenfranchisement in teams from not understanding their piece in the puzzle and what they’re working toward
Three key takeaways
Do you have your ecosystem defined?
What does the team think of the ecosystem? Is it effective?
How well do you know the coal-face of the organisation?
