(2018-02-01) Gilad Why You Should Stop Using Product Roadmaps And Try The Gist Framework

Itamar Gilad: Why you should stop using product roadmaps and try the GIST Framework. Here’s what I used to do:... there is almost no room for agility — changes at the top cause huge ripple effects of replanning and project cancellations at the bottom. Agile development addressed project waterfall, but didn’t change planning waterfall. So, what’s the alternative? GIST.

the results are very consistent — lightweight plans that are built for change, lower management overhead, improved team velocity and autonomy, better cross-company alignment and ultimately better products and solutions.

The system is called GIST after its main building blocks: Goals, Ideas, Step-projects, and Tasks

I will do a longer post on each part of the system. Below is an overview.

Goals

Most strategy plans (strategic context) commit a cardinal sin — they specify solutions (use technology X, partner with company Y, launch country Z) rather than goals.

Goals embody this principle — they describe the company strategy in terms of desired outcomes

I became most familiar with goals at Google where every quarter we meticulously spelled out our goals in the form of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). Some believe that OKRs are one of the reasons why Google is so successful.

Ideas

Ideas describe hypothetical ways to achieve the goals. The key word here is hypothetical — there can be many ideas how to achieve a given objective, but at most 1 in 3 ideas will deliver a positive result.

Collect all ideas in an Idea Bank, most commonly a spreadsheet or a database — all ideas are welcome and the bank can hold hundreds of ideas indefinitely. (opportunity solution tree)

Prioritize using evidence — I like Sean Ellis’s ICE prioritization

Put as many ideas as possible to the test in order of priority — that’s the job of Step-projects.

Step-projects

we break the bigger project behind the idea into small step-projects, each no more than 10 weeks long, and execute them one at a time

each step-project is actually an experiment that tests the idea

we are able to test many more ideas in parallel with lower investment and with quicker learning

Tasks

each step-project is broken down to bite-size activities which we call here Tasks.

The planning cycle

Goals are typically set for an horizon of one or more years

Ideas are constantly collected and prioritized.

Step-projects are defined at the beginning of the quarter.

The quarterly step-project list (typically stored in a spreadsheet or database tool) is evaluated and reprioritized every 1–2 weeks, in sync with task iterations planing.

Tasks are planned in 1–2 week iterations in per the teams’ preferred dev method