Decomposing a high-level strategy is hard. Immediately we want to know “When is it going to be done?” and “How much is going to cost? (In effort, time, and/or actual $$$)” It’s a fair question to ask because in tight times we want to make sure we aren’t wasting effort (and $$$). We spend days and weeks debating who to move to which team and calculating budgets requests to increase staffing.

I recently read Shape Up based on the recommendation of peers at work looking to iterate on their product development life cycle. Like many companies we follow scrum loosely. Scrum works well once an initiative moves into delivery but we struggle with the upfront discovery, definition, and design phases. Historically we have done annual planning, spending countless months to create outcomes, debate initiatives, and adjust the organizational structure only to realize 2 months in to the new year we need to pivot.