How do you stay aligned while agile?

I think the key here is understanding what alignment actually is (in any given situation.) Often I've seen different orgs have their own set up of KPI's or business metrics that may/may not align to other orgs or even the company as a whole! So one org might be doing really well relative to THEIR set of business goals but overall it's in contrast to the rest of the business...which obviously isn't great. Most of the reason for this happening is poor communication and (early) alignment activities ...Read More

It's important to make a plan but plans should change when presented with new information.  PMMs on my team are aligned to sprint teams within our organization so that we have a small team of PMM, PM, Engineering, Design, and Data. They have their own rituals and practices that allow them to discuss tradeoffs, reprioritize, and plan their roadmaps. How do they stay agile? They typically have goals/KPIs that they're aiming to hit together as a team. They look at this data regularly and assess if ...Read More

Trusting the team and tracking key results and progress versus tracking what people are working on. Tracking what they are working on ends up being micromanagement. Things can change fast, especially if you're in a startup.  Stay agile, get disciplined about the key results you feel support the objective, and have your team share their progress on those. Be sure to assign ownership to those objectives. The classic V2MOM that Sales force defined had the O has Obstacles. Our CMO modified that to O ...Read More

I stay aligned with my leadership by building in public. I share our on-going updates on Slack to ensure teams know what's on our plate, along with performance stats and learnigns. I also utilize all hands and MBRs to share what's working, what's not, and plans for executing against goals. Agility comes from staying centered on the north stars. As long as I'm working on the business priorities, I'm able to take on tasks that help us perform against goals (or remove what isn't) to stay focused, a ...Read More