Comments on: Focus Stories – Is Your Story Big Enough for the work you are doing?

By: Glen B. Alleman

Glen B. Alleman — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:24:24 +0000

Mike,
The Concept of Operations used in defense and space – and other places – attempts this. But the Kennedy statement is the seminal approach.

The one I remember from Hubble was Frank Cipalinni’s (the Hubble PM) for the Robotic Service Mission.

“Fly to Hubble with the robotic service module, and…

1. Do no harm to my telescope
2. Change the Wide Field Camera
3. Attach the battery service umbilical”

he then asked “how much does that cost?” and “when can you be ready to fly?”

By: Mike Cohn

Mike Cohn — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:55:37 +0000

Hi Mike–
In the great, short book _Teamwork_ by Larson and LaFasto they say that for a team to excel it needs a “clear, elevating goal” and use this exact example. It is indeed a great example of what is needed for a team to *focus* on their clear, elevating goal.
Thanks for your blog post.

By: asroka

asroka — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:34:24 +0000

Hi Mike:

Really good post. I have been talking to George about the “commander’s intent” analogy. I’ve also been talking lately about Jeff Patton’s notion of the Shrinking Story. There seems to be a nexus of ideas here, and we should discuss it further.

There is also something missing, IMO. That is the question of what happens when we get feedback.

Inevitably what we get feedback to is the smaller more detailed stories and not these overarching Focus Stories. What does that feeback tell us about our overall vision, and how do we communicate that?

For example, the shuttle program was a huge success, but also ultimately a failure because what the customers wanted was a cheap way to launch and maintain their satellites. The Focus Story was to create a reusable craft that could be launched over-and-over and safely carry crew and experiments as well as payload. But, it was too expensive to launch and customers quickly started looking for disposable vehicles that could do the job cheap and with greater frequency.

So, what should happen to the Focus Story when the customer keeps asking for things that don’t align with it? How can we inspect-and-adapt so that we recognize where the real value is and change our overarching mission to reflect that?

Thanks,
Adam