A summary of “Evidence Guided” by Itamar Gilad — Part 3 (Tasks and the evidence-guided company)
This third part emphasizes the challenges faced in aligning developers and business stakeholders within agile methodologies, drawing on Itamar’s insights and the transformational story of ACMI Invoice. It highlights the widening gap between teams and end-users and the role of Product Managers in bridging it.
All parts:
- Part 1 — Intro and Goals
- Part 2 — Ideas and Steps
- Part 3 — Tasks and the evidence-guided-company (this post)
Tasks
Bridging the Gap Between Developers and End-users
In the dynamic world of software development, adopting agile methodologies has promised increased efficiency and enhanced value delivery. Yet, as Itamar observes, alongside its benefits, agile has unwittingly widened the divide between developers and their end-users.
The advent of agile ushered in a wave of continuous improvement and end-user value, but with mass adoption came unintended consequences.
Itamar highlights a significant downside: the proliferation of specialized roles, resulting in a growing gap between engineers and end-users. Despite agile’s core principle of delivering value, teams often grapple with conflicting mindsets — the linear (quarterly and annually) thinking of management versus the iterative, sprint-driven (2 weeks) approach of agile teams. This clash leads, as Itamar rightfully points out, to a transformation from dedicated problem-solvers into mere executors, detached from the broader context necessary for effective decision-making.
Or, as Marty Cagan, coins it, to a team of “mercenaries instead of a team of missionaries”. Lacking the context and direct user feedback to properly prioritize maintenance work and refactoring efforts against new features and innovation.
Enter the Product Manager — tasked with bridging this ever-widening gap. Yet, in their efforts to reconcile divergent perspectives, Product Managers often find themselves entangled in a web of review meetings, further exacerbating the disconnect between teams and customers. Even further fulling the infamous model of outputs over outcomes.
The proposed solution?
Tasks and the GIST board
Tasks serve as a solution to address these issues, translating goals, ideas, and steps into actionable items. Leveraging existing tools like Jira, tasks should be interconnected within GIST, fostering a comprehensive understanding of context.
Unlike regular backlogs, step backlogs prioritize idea validation with short timeframes (a few weeks) and include various validation steps like technical validation, fake-door tests, and design work, ensuring transparency and avoiding hidden projects and resulting in a healthy mix of product discovery and delivery steps.
Teams can streamline their workflow and prioritize opportunities by introducing steps and tasks. Leaders, including Product Managers, should incorporate research steps to ensure accountability and contextual understanding. While step backlogs are a positive step, Itamar suggests implementing a GIST board to integrate all relevant layers, while maintaining related tasks in Jira and other tools, promoting team collaboration and alignment. The physical or digital board should be accessible to the team for optimal effectiveness.
Team meetings
In his book, Itamar recommends structured team meetings, suggesting brief sessions of 30 minutes weekly or bi-weekly before task planning. These meetings aim to review and discuss the following by using GIST:
- quarterly goals and progress towards it
- ideas and their priorities
- progress on steps,
- changes to the plan
The main benefit of using a GIST board is to maintain context among team members and prevent overemphasis on specific tasks. It also fosters a sense of progress and advancement, and the board serves as a tool for communication with stakeholders inside and outside the company.
Itamar suggests that each team manages its own GIST board, with key decisions made by a trio composed of a lead engineer, a designer, and a product manager. However, anyone on the team should be able to review and challenge decisions made by the trio.
Goals
Review and update goals based on OKRs each quarter, ensuring a balanced mix of product, design, and engineering objectives as the foundation of the GIST board.
Ideas
When choosing ideas, revisit previous ideas and add new ones from engineering and design. Itamar advises empowering the team to decide which ideas to pursue, promoting team autonomy. In particular, ensure the team works evidence-based instead of opinion-based by letting them:
- optimize for goals.
- test ideas before delivery.
- explore more ideas, because the ones that fail can be skipped
- say no to ideas that don’t achieve the goals
Steps
The process of choosing steps involves developing and validating core assumptions to enable the pursuit of multiple ideas simultaneously. Highlighting contextual leadership, an example from Gmail days is shared, showcasing the importance of team involvement in the GIST process to foster innovation and counteract rigidity.
Each step is executed by a small, autonomous group, beginning with a kickoff meeting to establish what the team wants to achieve and how.
Each step is deemed successful if it leads to enough evidence to validate the underlying idea. Itarma suggests for each step to define:
- what
- with whom
- how to test
- what to measure and
- what is considered a success
Or in a sentence format
“We believe that [doing this], for [this target group], will achieve [this benefit]. We know it was successful when we see [this measurable result]”
Overal flexibility is advocated, proposing a departure from rigid planning by integrating steps into regular Kanban or Sprint processes to enhance agility and streamline operations.
The evidence-guided company
Let’s delve deeper into the narrative of ACMI Invoice, a company grappling with a decline in momentum and the aftermath of misguided strategic decisions. Facing these challenges head-on, ACMI Invoice embarked on a transformative journey under the visionary guidance of Itamar’s pioneering approach to evidence-guided decision-making.
The initial phase of ACMI Invoice’s transformation was marked by establishing a specialized strategic team. This team, equipped with comprehensive market, competitive, and customer research, became the linchpin of the company’s evolution. By meticulously validating opportunities, ACMI Invoice was able to pivot away from ventures with diminishing returns and double down on those with promising potential. For instance, when considering expansion into new markets, ACMI Invoice’s strategic team conducted thorough analyses, assessing market demand, competitive landscapes, and customer preferences. Armed with actionable insights, the company made informed decisions, mitigating risks and maximizing opportunities for success.
Integral to ACMI Invoice’s restructuring was implementing a streamlined organizational framework. Product teams, each comprising a diverse mix of engineers and designers, were led by a trio of leaders — the Product Manager, designer, and lead engineer. This trio, entrusted with decision-making autonomy, was the driving force behind innovation and strategic alignment. For example, when developing a new product feature, the trio collaborated closely to ensure alignment with the company’s overarching goals and strategies. By fostering a culture of cross-functional collaboration and accountability, ACMI Invoice’s teams were empowered to deliver value swiftly and effectively.
However, the transformation extended beyond structural adjustments. ACMI Invoice embraced a culture of continuous improvement, adapting its practices to optimize efficiency and innovation. The introduction of the GIST board revolutionized task management, providing teams with a visual representation of interconnected tasks and fostering collaboration. For instance, when planning the rollout of a new feature, teams utilized the GIST board to visualize dependencies, prioritize tasks, and track progress in real-time. This newfound flexibility and transparency enhanced communication and coordination, enabling teams to respond swiftly to evolving priorities and market dynamics.
Central to ACMI Invoice’s success was establishing regular sync meetings, strategically scheduled to precede task planning sessions. These meetings allowed teams to align on goals, share insights, and address challenges collaboratively. For instance, during a sync meeting, teams discussed progress toward quarterly objectives, identified bottlenecks, and brainstormed solutions. By fostering open communication and a shared sense of purpose, ACMI Invoice’s sync meetings became instrumental in driving progress and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
In essence, ACMI Invoice’s transformation exemplifies the power of evidence-guided decision-making and organizational agility in navigating complex business landscapes. By embracing a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement, ACMI Invoice emerged stronger and more resilient, poised to thrive in an ever-changing market environment.”
Conclusions
My main takeaways from this last part:
- The gap between developers and users: Agile widened the gap between developers and users. Product Managers bridge this gap but often get bogged down in review meetings.
- Tasks and GIST board: Tasks address agile issues by translating goals, ideas, and steps into actionable items. GIST boards integrate tasks, fostering collaboration and transparency.
- Structured team meetings: Brief meetings before task planning maintain context, prevent task overemphasis, and foster progress.
- Empowering teams: Empowering teams to decide on ideas promotes autonomy and a culture of creativity and accountability.
- Evidence-guided company: ACMI Invoice’s transformation emphasizes evidence-based decision-making, autonomous product teams led by trios, and a culture of continuous improvement.
Itamar’s framework, embodied in the story of ACMI Invoice, underscores the importance of context, collaboration, and continuous learning in driving meaningful innovation. By embracing uncertainty and iterating toward success, organizations can navigate the complex software development landscape with confidence and agility.
