Steer with product vision, strategy and goals
Product Owners own and lead the product vision and strategy. To do so, you must manage and maximize the value of your product as a visionary, focusing on the future and the opportunities the product could accomplish to satisfy the unmet needs of current and potential customers. When you hold and communicate a captivating vision for the product you are able to inspire the team and stakeholders to align around a better future for the product.
With this product vision, you create a shared understanding of the product strategy and use goals to help the organization move closer to it in an empirical way. Taking an empirical approach allows the Scrum Team to adapt their next actions based on feedback and evaluate if their goals are still relevant. The following goal structure that supports an empirical approach as described in the Evidence-Based Management framework.
- Strategic goals outline the direction for reaching the vision, they are however aspirational goals and the steps necessary to reach it are filled with unknowns. To work toward a goal with many uncertainties on its path, the Scrum Team will need a series of more practical targets, such as intermediate goals.
- Intermediate goals are achievements that move the Scrum Team closer to the strategic goal. The path to an intermediate goal is still uncertain, but not completely unknown, for example the Product Goal. To allow frequent inspection of progress toward this intermediate goal, and timely adaptation when needed, Scrum Teams apply tactical goals.
- Tactical goals are critical near term objectives that help a team move toward the intermediate goal. A tactical goal could be, for example, a Sprint Goal.
Consider the following example:
A brick and mortar grocery chain store has been trying to encourage their customers to shop with them via their new online website. They think it offers convenience which could bring in more repeat revenue and is also a way for the store to capture new customers. However, they notice that many of their customers are reluctant. Customers are worried that they could receive damaged produce and goods in the online experience.
Their goals are the following:
Strategic goal: Our long-term objective is to make it easy and reliable for customers to buy groceries from us online. We know we will have achieved this when we see a 20% increase in customers purchasing groceries online.
Intermediate goal: Our near-term objective is to make existing customers feel confident that they will receive fresh, quality products and goods when shopping in our online store. We know we will have achieved this when we see an increase in customer confidence score rise from an average of 2.5 to a 3 or above.
Tactical goal: Our short-term objective is to increase the freshness and quality of produce and goods customers receive in their orders. We know we will have achieved this when we see a 25% decrease in requests for refunds and credit from purchases.
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