An agile application in the organisation depends on a thoughtful application. Whether you are choosing SAFe or Scrum to scale agile, a right balance between strategy and execution is important. Many organisations will start scaling agile practices by implementing the framework that they are familiar with, but the organisations can achieve true agility only when the leaders guide the teams on a journey rather than fitting them into the framework. Common reasons for the failure of agile practices include a lack of alignment between strategy and execution. The current blog guides on connecting organisational strategy with hands-on delivery at scale.
What are the Reasons for the Gap between Strategy and Execution?
Many organisations fail in spite of making heavy investments in agile transformation. The key reason is a long gap between strategy and execution. Here are a few reasons why there exists a gap between execution and strategy. These gaps can be addressed effectively if you learn skills and build your future with the leading SAFe certification.
Teams fail to Connect the Strategic Goals set by Leaders
Leaders often set long strategic goals, and teams fail to connect with them due to their everyday workload. As they get occupied with the operational tasks, they will have little room left to achieve strategic priorities. Over time, this phenomenon builds a gap between strategy and execution.
Priorities Changing
The customers’ requirements in the current world are dynamic. The traditional planning methods often fail to address these changes because they rely on quarterly and half-yearly roadmaps. The customers’ requirements might have changed by the time they are communicated. Teams often struggle working on reschedules and adjusting resources. This may create confusion among the teams and reduce their productivity.
No Single View of Work
Many large organisations use multiple tools for reporting, and the visibility of the work becomes limited here. There may be duplication of efforts and dependency hurdles due to a lack of visibility. There will be delays in the delivery, too. Due to a lack of a single view of work, the agile leaders fail to prioritise tasks and manage resources, which in turn creates a gap between strategy and execution.
No Real-time Insights
In spite of transitioning to agile, organisations rely on static reporting and fail to gain real-time insights into the ongoing work. The business fails to detect risks and bottlenecks before they affect customer outcomes. Generating static reports needs time investment from teams, and they fail to focus on execution, creating a gap with the defined strategy.
Balancing Strategy and Execution in Agile Environments
Align Strategy at all Levels of the Organisation
The project manager who wants to align strategy with execution should connect it to the operations at all levels. They should use visible boards across the organisation to connect the business strategy at the team level. The number of visible boards needed varies as per the size of the organisation because these boards show the workflow from strategy to delivery at various levels of the organisation. By establishing these boards at the team level, the project manager can manage project execution and delivery. When they have the boards accessible at the coordination level, the project manager will be able to manage both alignment and interdependencies easily. At the strategic level, these visual boards help the project manager to manage the direction of organisational priorities. The visual boards at different levels should be connected through a shared workflow to fill the gap between strategy and execution.
Benefits of Visual Boards at Different Levels
The visual boards established at different levels are connected through shared workflows. It helps the project manager with real-time insights into the team’s work. They can easily identify duplication of effort and efforts that do not contribute to the business objective. With these real-time insights, the project manager can prioritise tasks according to strategic shifts and reduce unwanted dependencies. Strategy should be connected to every operational level through visual boards to balance the execution.
The Role of Feedback
The feedback loops will nourish the organisational strategy. The agile project manager should establish feedback loops at all levels to connect the system with alignment. The project manager should conduct quarterly reviews to assess if the strategy is flowing towards execution. These reviews should be focused on driving the team towards outcomes rather than deliverables. They should build an ongoing roadmap of reviews to evaluate actual results and adjust them to align with the strategic priorities. The leaders should keep the communication alive with the teams and sustain the purpose at every decision made.
Balance Outputs with Outcomes
Measuring progress is one of the key tasks in balancing strategy and execution in the agile world. The agile project leader should measure the strategic execution to assess if they are creating a real impact. The aim is to measure results and not deliverables alone. The manager should measure outcomes over outputs. The outcomes can be measured by defining the results that are aligned with strategic objectives. They can assure it by measuring a few indicators like improved customer satisfaction, increased market share, and revenue generation. They should continuously assess whether strategic assumptions are meeting execution needs or need to be revised.
This does not mean the outputs should be ignored. The project manager needs to measure outputs to calculate the team needed to deliver each output. It will also help the project manager know if there are any delays and obstacles in the progress.
Conclusion
Strategic alignment with the execution is a continuous process, so the project manager should use visible boards to align the teams towards strategic goals. They should encourage the teams to focus on outcomes rather than outputs.