Christina Wodtke’s book, Radical Focus, is amazing! It’s a must-read for teams using Team OKR (Objectives and Key Results for Teams).
The idea of “Monday Commitments and Friday Wins” that she shares in her book is extremely useful. In fact, I personally apply it to publish articles and posts on LinkedIn. Every Monday, I make a commitment (considering my schedule for the week), and on Friday, I review and celebrate another active week with articles and posts on LinkedIn.
However, when working with teams in organizations, especially teams that create digital products, platform teams, or transformation and advisory teams, I often can’t achieve results in a week. It’s the nature of the work.
In these cases, I use Team OKR combined with Scrum, exactly as described in this section of the post on Triple Track Development.
Team OKR and Scrum quarterly cycle
Key results will be reviewed at each Sprint Review, that is, every week (if it’s a one-week sprint), or every two weeks, in the case of two-week sprints. In Team OKR, key results are related to outcomes.
Scrum and Team OKR Events
Still, I like the mantra “Monday Commitments and Friday Wins,” which fits perfectly for Scrum teams with weekly sprints. On Monday, the team does sprint planning, making the commitment, and on Friday, the sprint review and retrospective, to review and celebrate what was achieved.
For teams aiming to achieve goals associated with deliveries and efforts extending over more than a few days, such as many of the teams I collaborate with, the strategy of “Monday Commitments and Friday Wins” can effectively drive progress on the week’s to-do list (Sprint backlog). This includes work items from tasks to user stories and deliverables. These items generally represent the outputs generated.
Outputs are fine as long as they are related to some outcome. Perhaps on Friday, you can’t celebrate the completion of the outcome, but at least you should check for some progress towards it. Therefore, as shown in the image above, I suggest that if you are using Scrum and Team OKR, in the last 15 minutes of your Sprint Review, you also check your Team OKR. Celebrate the outputs, but review and verify the outcomes of your Team OKR.
“Monday Commitments and Friday Wins” always! Even if it takes a few consecutive weeks to achieve the desired outcome! Tweet This.
