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Weekly Outcomes for Teams and Leaders

  • Artikkeli

Weekly outcomes are the key to execution excellence.  They support incremental progress, flowing value, and continuous learning.  I’ve written about weekly outcomes before in Weekly Outcomes: The Simple Weekly Planner and How To Lead High-Performance Teams.    Great, but now I want to really shine the spot light on what an example looks like and why.

First, here is a simple example:

-- Weekly Outcomes Example --

Weekly Outcome: 11/12/2012

3 Wins

  1. Customer impact story  (roadmap and story on a page)
  2. Starter Kit for Foo (prototype and model and addresses the Foo story)
  3. Library Model (Draft Complete)

A – Z List

  1. Adoption Story (Integrate feedback and insights)
  2. Anatomy of an Engagement Walkthrough
  3. Capabilities and Workloads at a Glance
  4. Change Management Story
  5. Cloud story on a Page
  6. Core Deliverables (against Core Services)
  7. Demo Deck for Foo 1
  8. Demo Deck for Foo 2
  9. Demo Kit for Bar 1
  10. Demo Kit for Bar 2
  11. Demo Kit for Bar 3
  12. Demo Kit for Team Roles and Responsibilities
  13. Deployment Story at a Glance
  14. Escalation Alignment Template
  15. Hot Spot Identification
  16. How To Videos
  17. Information Architecture (Names, overlap, splitting services)
  18. Library Fix (Core scenarios functioning)
  19. Milestone Map for Foo
  20. Narrative of an Engagement
  21. Outcomes and Deliverables List
  22. Roles and RACI Map
  23. Starter Kits for Bar
  24. Starter Kit for Foo
  25. Sweep of Library to catch up
  26. Transformation Story
  27. Video - How To Do Foo
  28. Video - How To Do Bar

-- End Weekly Outcomes Example --

 

Notice three things in the example above:

  1. A simple list of three wins at the top
  2. A complete list of all the work on the radar organize alphabetically A-Z.
  3. Sometimes a win is simply progress or a key milestone – such as “Draft Complete”

This approach helps keep relentless focus on the three wins for the week.   It helps bubble of the critical outcomes that will make or break success for the week (at least as we currently understand what success looks like.)    This short list of wins at the top also helps us align our work with each other to support the goals, as well as to track a short set of key wins.  Most importantly, if we need to adjust throughout the week, we are simply dealing with a working set of three high-value wins.

The longer A-Z list is our “pick-list” to pull from and to help remind us that just because our short list of three wins is front and center, does not mean we are not aware of the bigger picture and competing priorities.   The three wins help us keep everything in perspective and help us avoid analysis paralysis and information overwhelm.  Meanwhile, we are able to easily grab things from the A-Z list.  This helps us stay agile and fluid and most importantly, always flowing value.

The two lists – the simple + complete – really compliment each other.  The three wins force us to really focus on what value is and what the priorities are, and the longer list always keeps us on top of our game.  We get the full balcony view.   It also helps create a sense of urgency because we are aware of all the work that needs to be done.  At the same time, it creates a very simple way to keep focused on flowing value and enjoying our victories.

If you want to seriously and significantly drive amazing value from your team, use the Three Win approach with weekly outcomes.

You can find out this technique and more for execution excellence in my book, Getting Results the Agile Way.