Creating Business Objectives for Roadmaps

Part 9 - Successful Roadmaps Series

Business objectives are the measurable goals of what you will achieve when you have finished reaching your product vision.

Every capability on your roadmap has business objectives that align with the capability. Typically, the relationship is one to many. There is one capability and many business objectives underneath it. These business objectives are the measurements that determine if you have completed the capability. Business objectives are the measurable part of the definition of done or minimally viable product. My calculating these measurements, you will empirically know that the capability has been completed. Think of business objectives as a high-level acceptance criteria.

Business objectives are easily measured so you don’t need a degree in Physics to calculate them. The more complicated the calculation the more likely it is that the calculated result will not be accurate or understandable by the organization. The organization must not only understand the business objective measurement, but also how to interpret the results. What results are good? What results are not good? For clarity define a range of measurements. Here’s an example:

Claims Process – This measurement is the percentage of claims that were successfully process on the first pass without error.

Result Range

0% - 70% = Did not achieve the objective.

80% - 89% = Significant Progress, Below Target

90% = Target Result

91% - 100% = Excellent, Above Target

Actual Result is 91% which indicates we are above the target and met the business objective.

Business objectives should stretch the organization a little bit but avoid overly ambitious objectives that can’t be realistically achieved. If a business objective can’t be realistically achieved is best to leave it off the table.

Business objectives can certainly be aligned with multiple capabilities. Let’s say your intention is to release a beta product that will be testing in the open market for a few weeks, so you are able to learn more about customer expectations of your product. Your initial business objective might be to hit a goal around user growth. In the early phases of the roadmap your user growth is going to be slower as your product isn’t fully realized. As you release new capabilities or fix failure points with capabilities, you can reasonably assume that user adoption will increase.

Consider product or project level business objectives in conjunction with capability based objectives. A good approach is to have product-based objectives measure the overall performance of the product. An example would be user growth or general response time for the application. Establish business objectives for each capability. These capability objectives answer the question, “How do I know if my capability has been achieved?”

Measurements – like business objectives – require a plan to determine what the measurements are, when the measurements will be calculated, who is performing that work, and how they are to be communicated.

All these numbers seem like a crazy waste of time but they are there to help you in your journey towards reaching your vision.