4 Qs - Forecasting for Agile (...and a Special Offer!)

Quintessential Thought

Many organizations’ forecasting practices are arduous, requiring detailed, long-term schedules, low-level year-long budgets, and a long list of fine-grained backlog items. When we’re in a complex environment of ambiguity and unpredictability, this approach decreases agility, unnecessarily constraining adaptability, learning, and creativity. It’s also a hidden waste, as leaders push for more detail on things that will need to be completely reevaluated when we learn more about our complexity.

Some people I’ve coached have reacted by suggesting we throw out forecasting entirely, with declarations like, “There are no dates in Agile!” Oof. That’s not going to work, either. Leaders and customers need to make investment decisions, and forecasting to enable this is a reasonable expectation.

The question is…how do we forecast in ways that enable effective investment decisions and enable agility and learning? In the coming weeks, we’ll give you 4 core practices of Agile Forecasting that will help you find a balance between these needs.

If you’ve been reading our 4 C’s newsletters for a while, it should come as no surprise that all of our practices will be based on your clarity of two things:

• What does success look like? Often, it’s assumed that success is meeting the forecasts, but that doesn’t mean your product is successful. To forecast well, you will need to wrestle with the indicators of success for your product.

• What are we trying to learn? Another assumption is that we know everything, or nearly so. But if you are operating in complexity, there are too many unknowns and changes to be that certain. So, what are the most important things for you to learn to enable success?

Quotes

“To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.” — Chinese proverb

“Build less, start sooner.” — Jim Highsmith

“Setting oneself on a predetermined course in unknown waters is the perfect way to sail straight into an iceberg.” — Henry Mintzberg

Quick Step

What is the most helpful thing forecasting conversation you’ve had about forecasting? The least helpful?

Question

Revisit and the definition of success for your product. A couple of our past posts may help: Rethinking Value & Experiment to Activate.

Professional Product Discovery and Validation, Jan 24

Want to chat? Reach out to [email protected] so we can help you get Unstuck!

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