Let’s Review and Refocus

Bart has been in ecommerce for over 20 years, and can't imagine a better job to have. He is interested in all things agile, or anything new to learn.

  Benefits Realization   Decision Making   Lessons Learned  

As the summer begins, many organizations will take stock on how the first two quarters of the year went by doing a mid-year business review of business results and project deliveries. Both facets of the review are important, both individually and combined, and both can help either keep the team on track (if things are going well) or get the team back on track (if they are not.) As project managers, we are often stuck in the middle. Business results are important, and of course are often the results of the products that were launched or the new projects that were deployed. However, business results are often considered an output metric, and represent the results of the projects that were inputs to the overall business. Outputs are an important thing to measure, and indeed, are the things that keep businesses running, profits being generated, and a company in business. But our project teams are generally more focused on the inputs, since those are what the team can control and can impact more directly.

Product and project owners usually come into the year with a roadmap containing what they want to accomplish for the upcoming twelve months. The roadmap consists of new products, new features, and new offerings that are intended to delight existing customers while simultaneously attracting new ones. Not all efforts are going to succeed, of course, and any mature organization …

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