The Better Business Analysis Institute presence. The Better Business Analysis Podcast with Benjamin Walsh. Hi everybody, and welcome back to the Better Business Analysis Podcast with Benjamin Walsh. Now this week we're going to be focusing on Smart Objectives. This is part of our BA Unleashed series and I know we've been focusing a lot on strategic analysis and for some of you you could have been a lot a bit lost
in that. This is not necessarily what 80% of the population of BAS focus on. However, it's so critical BAS are there to add value to the business and how can you do that without understanding what the market conditions are and what the strategy of the business is, right. So we are going to be moving on to where BAS typically may have heard of these terms. I believe B as are best to define these with the executive
team. And what we're talking about are strategic SMART objectives, OK. And we're going to run through what SMART stands for. It's an acronym and we're going to talk about how strategic objectives shape our programs of work, our Epics and therefore user stories. OK, so if you haven't heard of SMART objectives, then I would recommend that you know you should, you should Google this
stuff specifically. SMART objectives are goals that are specific, is measurable in achievable, A relevant and time bound. They're commonly used in program and project management and also business planning. They, they, they can be used for both sides of the coin here and they allow us this. The SMART method allows us to ensure that the objectives are well defined and aligned with our overall strategy, what we're trying to achieve for like next
three years for example, right. So we're going to go through SMART objectives, We're going to talk about what SMART stands for. SMART stands for specific, Yes, for specific. What does that mean? That means objectives should be clear and specific, leaving no room for ambiguity. If everyone in the exec team, everyone in the business unit doesn't know what this objective means, it's not right. Specific objectives should answer the question of who, what, where, when and why.
So the five WS and you know you can add in the two HS as well in terms of how and how much because we'll be talking about that on our second point which is MMM stands for measurable objectives, should be quantifiable, allowing progress to be tracked and measured. This helps us in determining whether or not the objective has been achieved or not. And this is really important for lots of reasons.
One, it's our guiding light and make sure that the projects and programs and all the complexity that goes underneath these strategic objectives always have the eye on the prize. If you do benefits realization, which is part of the Better Business analysis, sorry, Better Business case process here in New Zealand and in the UK, if you know about benefits realization and if you know about strategic logic mapping, that's all here. OK.
This is the map. This is the map between your problem statements, your objectives and your benefits. This is so critical. OK. So that's M measurable #3 is achievable. Objectives should be realistic and attainable within the given constraints such as resourcing and time and expertise and the people you tone have around the organization. And most importantly, if you bring in what we've learned over the last couple of weeks, is this achievable in the market
you're in? Is this actually achievable? Here's one example when we talk about achievable and specific and now moving on to I guess we've just covered measurable. Here would be an example. We want to increase the amount of new customers that we acquire each month from 11:50 at our AT Tim's mechanics store, OK. We want to do that by the end of 2023. Now that is a specific measurable that is achievable. OK. We're increasing something that naturally happens.
We acquire 10 people, you know, organically and we want to invest some time, some effort in terms of uplifting that by 20% from 11:50, OK. So that's something that's achievable. If I said I wanted to increase my customers from 10 to 500, unless I was a specific, you know, Unicorn organization, that's not going to happen. Achievable means that you can set goals that are achievable, like I just said 20%. However, you can add a stretch
goal what's called 25%. So a stretch goal is sometimes used at the end of strategic objectives to talk about say, when a bonus should be paid out. So your exec team could say, well the goal is 20%. If we reach 25% that helps with our cash flow and we're able to pay bonuses. So this is where the bonus system and performance management should come from, #4 is relevant. Objectives should be aligned with the overall strategy and contribute to the greater goals of the organization.
So this means that someone's pep project on the side that isn't aligned with our strategy or someone who has come up with something in the operational team if it doesn't align with our strategy, don't try and fit the, you know the round peg and the square hole these this is a top down process. This is the way it should be done.
This is the three-year plan and you know and this is what we should be focusing on, these smart objectives should be meaningful and have a direct impact on the desired outcome, OK, that that means that they're relevant, they're relevant to what we're trying to achieve with our vision for the three-year period. You know it may not be three years, it could be longer or shorter, but let's say three years. So it needs to be relevant to what we, what dials do we want to move.
You know what levers do we need to pull for our company as a whole, which is why that's strategic. And an MBA mindset that you've developed over the last couple of weeks is so important #5 the last one is time bound. So objectives should have a specific time frame or deadline for completion. This helps setting priorities, managing resources and tracking progress. So this is when your strategic objectives can drop down to a
project plan or a program plan. And also at the end of the objective you should say by the end of 2023, for example, if you think of a specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound goal, you know the UN might say we we want to cut global emissions by, you know, 50% by the end of 2050 for example. Some would say that might not be achievable based on the politics around, you know, in this global
world. But it is an achievable goal if all the all the nations thought that this is what we should be focusing on on as a as a world. By setting these smart strategic objectives, organizations are able to ensure that their goals are well defined, achievable. Measurable. OK. This approach promotes clarity which is so important, accountability which is always missing a focus and ultimately leads to more successful outcomes for your organization. Smart objectives are awesome.
BAS are so good at helping to find those And if you, if you, if you think some of the stuff we've covered in the last couple of weeks has been a little bit out there.
This is this is where the rubber hits the road and where B as should be involved of you know more than 50% of the BA population should be involved in this, especially if you are a senior business analyst, OK. And if you're not a senior business analyst, if you're not even ABA, then at least you can see how organizational planning should take, should take place and you can help your exec team get here. You know, you should have a Max three to six of these.
If you're a small organization, I think 3 strategic objectives is enough, right? And this should be your plan. This should be the focus. This should be everything that matters here. So strategic objectives, once they're defined, then they can drop down in terms of a bit of a what are we going to do, how are we going to meet them? And in the agile world, we talk about what are called
initiatives or themes. They're usually one in the same, which then drop down to Epics. Now the if you talk about hierarchy, strategic objectives, Epics, and and initiatives, sorry, strategic objectives, themes and initiatives are all at the same level. Strategic themes in the agile world should really be the kind of buzzword, the main focus of the strategic objective. It shouldn't be a replacement for or another layer of abstraction.
So we're increasing the amount of new customers we wanted for our mechanic store and might be increased the amount of new customers might be the short phrase we use as our theme. It wouldn't be a replacement for the long written form of that would be our strategic objectives, OK. And that the same goes for if you're using term initiatives and that's when you that's the top pyramid of kind of the agile stack, this theme which then has Epics underneath it.
So OK, So what what what I've just said there is that strategic objectives are the same as themes. So they're the things, themes are just the paraphrase word, hopefully you don't you know lose any context by shortening it and then the epics go underneath that. So you might say as a mechanic store, I want to be able to engage with a marketing firm to help work out how we can increase new customer acquisition by 20% in the next
six months. So so that we can meet our goal of gaining 20%, you know, more customers per month by the end of 2023. That was a long sentence, but you get the point. So you wouldn't necessarily need that last bit, which is the strategic objective because we're already mapping up to it. But the epoch is there. That is now a thing we can do. So that's the first step on the
road to success. And then of course user stories can drop out of there, which might be task based you know, or they could be functional based or non functional based your your requirements if you like. So that's exactly how we define it. Epics are also called business requirements. In the kind of pre agile world they're one in the same. So these all map up to your
objectives. You've got your objectives, you've got your business requirements and you've got your functional non functional requirements. That's one world. Or you could say I've got my themes, which are the shortened version of my strategic objectives. I've got my epics and I've got my stories. OK, that's how it works. You can use either language, depending on your organization, but that is how everything breaks down to your BA world from here. Smart strategic objectives are
fantastic. They're awesome. They help define programs, they help track where we're at, and hopefully you've learned something today. So if you don't know about objectives, your team doesn't know why you're doing a piece of work. Ask for a copy of the strategic objectives for your organization and see how much your program aligns. See you next time.