Language of Business terms and planning horizons

Direction Setting and Measuring

Objectives

Metrics

key Results

Business Planning and Review Cycles

Strategic Long Term

Organisational visionary, and direction goal setting

Mid Term

Once a year there is a Planning / Forecasting cycle to help the company set and understand budgets, goals, strategic long term goal alignment and resourcing realities. In most cases this yearly planning is with the focus being only on the money side, when companies go through their agility transformations it becomes important to not only understand the money side but also the work that is going to be done with the money and the people that are needed to achieve the outcomes.

Short Term

Companies that have started their business agility journey generally review on a monthly or quarterly basis how they are tracking and if there are changes or pivots required which is a great thing, there however the yearly need to present to share holders, ensure that the goals for the year are aligned and make sense, let internal people have some forward insight, finance to align to cash flow and ensure that there are the right type and amount of people to deliver.

These reviews are sometimes called Quarterly Outcome Review (QOR), Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR), Quarterly Delivery Reviews (QDR), etc.

Sprint

This does not mean that people doing the work within teams should stop daily reviewing what they and the team are doing and continually correcting their course to ensure they working on the right outcomes. This is also done at a team level in a more formal way with a team Sprint review and planning session.

Market Place

It is extremely rare to find an organisation that has the exact number people with the right skills to do all the work that is needed to be done. The usual reality is that there is alway more work than people or money, and that the mix of people never perfectly matches the required people capabilities to achieve the desired deliverables.

This means that at the end of people supply and demand planning cycle, short term planning, there will be some contention. Marketplace brings together the leadership people (example: Product Owner, Group Owner, Chapter and Chapter Area Lead) to discuss the contention challenges or to resolve them by more creative means. Quite often it is discovered via the supply/chapter leads that the requested work is being done else where in the organisation, or that there is something that is more prioritised using the Strategic goals and measures.

In the early days of transformation, agreements are not always reached at marketplace and a captains call is required.