Part 4. Connect the Vision to a 2- or 3-Year Roadmap but Embrace Agile Development

A product vision must be at the right level of specificity that you can read it and immediately have in mind what the authors want to build – not in all details, but certainly in direction. The specifics get laid out as a next step in the 2-3-year roadmap. This sets a best-known course to delivering on the vision, enables teams to architect products for the long term, and gives teams a clear sense of priorities. Agile development isn’t in conflict with this approach. To the contrary, great agile development depends on having a longer-term north star that teams are pointing towards as they bite off tasks a bit at a time, iterating and adjusting course as feedback is received. 

What doesn’t work as well in this model is holding teams strictly accountable to the tried-and-true measures of “cost, schedule, and performance.” Teams should create vision and connected product plans, but if we encourage them to adjust those plans over time in response to their progress and shifting stakeholder needs so that they ultimately hit that ever shifting “true north,” then we cannot also hold them strictly accountable to a detailed schedule that they set out well in advance. We must instead measure them by the progress they make in delivering on stakeholder needs and on enabling “the business.” Whether the investment was a good one becomes a different calculation. Did the team allocate resources against the highest priorities?  Did they build a product that meets the need? Are the systems they created performant? Are they built for longevity? If a team is constantly adjusting to make sure every erg of their energy is optimally devoted to the mission of the organization, then we must measure their contributions according to the contributions they make to that mission.