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The Definition of Done - seperate Ambition from Success
Dieter Weisshaar • May 14, 2022
Photo by Eden Constantino on Unsplash
The definition of done - seperate Ambition from Success
The definition of done
or where the rubber hits the road makes
a major difference to succeed. Get things done is more difficult than it sounds. German Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz
announced on April 26th 2022 to deliver (heavy weapons (e.g. Gepard tanks) to Ukraine two months after the war started. On May 13th 2022 the CEO of Rheinmetall (weapon manufacturer) stated that they received not a single government approval to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine and the Magazine Focus stated the Gepard now need to be order by the Ukraine Government at KraussMaffei. Obviously the commitment from the German Bundeskanzler has not hit the road and the task is not done.
An announcement stays at ambition level at best but it is not succeeding as long as it is not done. Same applies in the corporate world.
The definition of Done (DoD)
is used in agile project management and it gets very transparent in software development. The DoD has acceptance criteria's
by its customer that means a task is done when it is completed, passed the acceptance criteria and is ready to get into production to create value. That is when the rubber hits the road. A piece of software (release) either passed its tests and is ready for deployment or go live but it can hardly be half ready to function.
On the German tanks: The acceptance criteria may be defined that tanks arrived in Ukraine, with ammunition and ready to get deployed that they can create value for Ukraine. That is not done and may be there is too little focus on get it done.
Same happens in corporate live: project decisions
are taken by executives and they assume in many cases that they have done their tasks. That is a faulty assumption. When a CEO approves a business case, they should follow up if the rubber hits the road or in corporate terms - does the project start to create value for the company.
In many companies good business cases are approved
and teams start engaging - money will be spent. But how many projects do fail (actually 70%),
that is quite a significant number and most of the investment is lost. There are a couple of reasons: lack of empowerment
to the team supposed to execute a project, lack of sufficient resources
to succeed with project, clear goals and criteria, company politics
(not invented here or we have other priorities than supporting this project).
Let's say you want to launch a new product
which requires a marketing team, a specialized and trained sales
team to go to market. The project owner starts to execute on the plan but the HR department is responsible for hiring new staff and a year later, they have delivered only 70% of what the plan expected in 3-6 months. HR states great progress as it is almost done. The product portfolio team have created a good overview on the product but missed out
to create a value proposition, target group, sales collateral and sales training. The project owner faces lack of execution as many task are almost ready but not done.
The value creation would start if marketing runs campaigns to attract potential customers, sales is picking up the leads and develops the opportunities to create a pipeline and finally order entry.
Reality is that the team is incomplete,
the required prerequisites aren't there
and results are pipeline is not build
and orders are not booked.
So the CEO calls this project a no starter. That is completely wrong as competition swiftly executed and brought a similar project to market with great success.
What is problem?
The ambition was right but many tasks have not been executed and completed in time which makes the project fail. Everyone supporting such projects need to understand the definition of done. It requires swift execution and deliverables which passed the acceptance criteria's.
Obviously the project owner was dependent on other teams
to contribute hence the issue is either the empowerment and the lack of resources.
How can this been avoided? If the project owner would have had a stronger empowerment and the CEO made this project a company priority that would have helped but a regular communication channel to the CEO or the Executive Management to highlight roadblocks and get them removed would be the best support the Board can provide. Important is that the C-Level is not interfering on the plans from all angles but empower the project owner to get things done and start creating value for your company.
Same is true for strategy execution: If you define a strategy, most companies suffer from taking a good strategy to execution. The strategy gets down to strategic goals, OKRs and initiatives. If you follow the advice above and you follow up till value creation starts
on every initiative and task, you get your strategy to execution, but it requires commitment from the C-Level.
A second good advice
is stop starting, start finishing. Do not start too many projects as long as you haven't finish the first ones and value creation has started. It makes the prioritization
of your projects even more important and you spend more time on the selection process
where to put your investment money.
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This is probably one of the hardest questions to answer. How much do I need to spend to win a customer and close a deal. This varies highly by market, product, target group, persona - let's have a look at the IT B2B market.
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