Why Shared Goals Matter!

Teams are more effective when they have clear and singular goals to guide their work. Goals are present in most Agile methodologies, like Sprint Goals and Product Goals in Scrum. 🎯

Yet, most teams don’t use them. 🤷‍♀️

Below are some of the reasons we hear most often in the context of Scrum or in general:
😣 Product Owners are not mandated to decide what goes on the Product Backlog and in what order. Instead, they must pass on “feature requests” or issues from stakeholders.
😣 Product Owners don’t have a vision or strategy for the product that guides the formulation of shared goals.
😣 Teams struggle with formulating a shared goal when their Product Backlog spans thousands of items. How do you decide what is important then?
😣 Teams may work on different products or projects simultaneously, making identifying one singular goal difficult.
😣 Sprints may be too short or long, making it hard to define a concrete, tangible shared goal that can be achieved within an iteration.
😣 Teams may be organized as ‘component teams’, working only on certain layers or components of the application (e.g., database, a specific web service, or the UI). This makes it hard to craft a shared goal that explains the functional purpose of an iteration.
😣 During Sprint Planning, teams often start with the Sprint Backlog and try to reverse-engineer a shared goal.
😣 Some work is unsuitable to Sprints’ time-boxed and purpose-driven nature. For example, support teams responsible for many products or services probably won’t benefit from using Sprints as ‘value-creation timeboxes.’

So, how can you improve the usage of shared goals?

Actions to start small and simple are:
1️⃣ As an experiment, start your next iteration with a goal you’d like to achieve and then select the items from the Product Backlog that fit that goal.
2️⃣ Next iteration, your team will politely say ‘No’ to any non-critical request that doesn’t fit the Sprint Goal.
3️⃣ Ask your most important stakeholders what they think the goal of your next iteration should be. If it’s too broad, reduce it.
4️⃣ Ask the team to tell the ‘story of their Sprints’: “First, we will [objective A] to allow us to [objective B] so that we can [objective C] … ” and so on. Then, identify what items should go on the Product Backlog to make those objectives possible. This helps shift teams more into a strategic mode than simply listing all the work.

What is your experience with using shared goals❓
What reasons for NOT using them do you recognize❓
What recommendations do you have to help a team start improving❓

Share goals are among the 20+ factors we measure to determine Agile & Scrum team effectiveness. Based on the results, teams receive evidence-based feedback on how to start improving.

Curious? Learn more at: https://columinity.com