Or “Start my initiative now 'coz I've secured the funding”

• Product Owner
• Product Manager
• Team Members
• Project Managers

Teams are expected to start work that has not been prioritized in the backlog due to the culture of “Oh! Well, I got funding approved from the business, so team must start work on my initiative now to show that work in being progressed, and corresponding cost expenses are charged to the budget for the initiative”.

This typically happens when approval of a project or initiative does not take into consideration the capacity of the organization.

Causes Team to start more work rather than finishing work already in progress reducing overall ability to deliver value. Drives culture of allocating certain percentage of capacity to multiple initiatives in progress, rather than focusing on early delivery of high (potentially) higher priority items as agreed on the road-map. It drives the culture of “Start More; Finish Less” vs “Stop Starting; Start Finishing”.

Product Managers and Product Owners and Project Managers should form close relationships and formalize their communication so that there is early awareness of the incoming work and clarity from both sides of the expectations associated with the project work. While sometimes this will not be possible (e.g. work that results from a divestiture where there are non-disclosures in place) this should be the exception rather than the rule. The aim is for everyone to understand where these projects fit on the relevant delivery road-maps.

NA

• Source: What Kinds of Problems Do you Typically See As The Organization Transforms to Agile / Lean?