Continuous learning, continuous prioritization to ensure continuous value delivery, continuous communication to all stakeholders. That is our job as epic shapers. We take the work that migth seem big and scary and help make everyone feel safe and confident that we will deliver!
Expectations / Description
Objective
As epic shapers we create, groom, and prioritize epics that take into account date-based commitments (if one has been set), stakeholder communication, and squad capacity awareness and rally the team around a plan to take on and deliver value through epics.
Key Results
- Optimize Learning Frequency
- A project is decomposed/sequenced in a way that delivers value to customers as early as possible and therefore creates consistent (weekly is the goal) learning moments for a squad. Ideally we are learning weekly about things such as:
- How customers will use the feature
- What bugs/edge cases we might have missed
- Are we meeting our hypotheses and measures
- and more!
- Each epic is written and sliced in a way, that when complete it accomplishes one (ideally all) of the following:
- We are able to enable the functionality or work into a customer account to deliver value
- We have progressed in de-risking the following:
- ... Feasibility: Can our delivery crew can build what we need with the time, skills and technology we have?
- ... Viability: Will the overall solution have the desired business outcome?
- ... Value: Will the overall solution be desired and useful to customers?
- in regard to commitments made by the squad, stakeholders (Internal P&E team members and cx squad members), have a clear view of and confidence in:
- ... what value is going to be delivered
- ... who it is going to be delivered to
- ... when it is going to be delivered
Details
Things you might deliver/do
- Write epics for a squad that takes into account date-based commitments (if one has been set), stakeholder communication, and squad capacity awareness. Great epics also take into account feasibility de-risking and customer value/impact learning.
- You will be responsible for decomposing the big initiative into epics that tell a story while providing value along the way as early as possible
- Responsible for prioritizing the epics. Working closely with the other roles to ensure stuff like bugs, tech debt, enhancements, and net new work is all sequenced in a healthy way.
- Organize epics into milestones in Clubhouse
AKA
- Squad progress communicator (Initiative to epic)
- Epic writer
Even more details that need to live in a lesson:
- If folks go to the agreed-upon place (weekly update, roadmap, etc), they will be able to see a clear view of progress that is easy to understand by a wide range of stakeholders (basically, every member of the Lessonly team).
- Usually, there is one per squad per quarter.
- Initiatives are usually big. They might even span multiple quarters.
- In this role, you will be responsible for decomposing the big initiative into epics that tell a story while providing value along the way.
- Good epics are ones that take into account date-based commitments (if one has been set), stakeholder communication, and squad capacity awareness. Great epics also take into account feasibility de-risking and customer value/impact learning.
- You will communicate changes (scope, timeline, etc) both effectively and as early as possible.
- You are also responsible for updating the Weekly Product lesson and coordinating with the Product Enablement team for the monthly round-ups and launch coordination.
- Responsible for prioritizing the epics. Working closely with the other roles to ensure stuff like bugs, tech debt, enhancements, and net new work is all sequenced in a healthy way.
- The strength and value is not that the person in this role making prioritization / technical decisions for epics but that they can facilitate the communication between the technical world (story prioritizer) and PM world (initiative prioritizer) using epics as their medium in order to make sure that "what is being worked on" is in alignment with "what we need" (and in what priority as a part of that).
Requirements
- Epic Shaper's must have a position with the reach of 2.1 or higher
- Epic Shaper's must be milestone 1+,Decomposition & Sequencing
- Epic Shaper's must be milestone 1+,Business and Technical Translation
- Epic Shaper's must be milestone 1+,Delivery Forecasting
- Epic Shaper's must be milestone 2+,Prioritization
Configuration Health
- ✅ Has 4 Abilities
- ✅ Is a part of 6 Positions
- ✅ Has been referenced in 8 pieces of public recognition
- ℹ️ No one has reacted to this Assignment
- ℹ️ Fewer than five people (1) have an official rating on this Assignment. To ensure anonymity, analysis will only appear after at least five people have ratings.
- ⛔️ Last updated: over 4 years ago
- ℹ️ Never conversed about
Examples / Observations
Observation created about 5 years agoOutcomes, baby, outcomes!!!
We don't do actions and create outputs for our health... we do it to change human behavior... we do it to make people's lives better, / easier.
Something as simple as having screenshots in the product board roadmap card made a big impact and reinforced a habit (that the answers AEs and AMs are looking for might just be in the roadmap).
I love the opportunity to shout out outcomes as opposed to activities and outputs. So I'm thrilled to write this OGO. Well done!
Observation created over 5 years agoAs we on Assess prepare for the launch of Certifications, we had a bit of an "oh, shit" moment today where it seemed like maybe we weren't all in alignment about what a Certification is. I felt a little scared, since that's not where you want to be 5 months into a project the month it's supposed to launch. So Justin called a meeting with Ashley, our designer, and me as Discovery Engineer. A lesser leader might have played the blame game ("who needs to work overtime to fix this?") or gone full command-and-control ("Here's my plan—make it happen"), but if you've worked with him, you know that's not Justin. Instead, and I've seen him do this before, he approached the situation from a place of curiosity, asking questions like "How did we get here?" Maybe it's because he has a million kids and has seen it all, but Justin's calmness immediately put me at ease, and his confident curiosity—like of course we're going to figure this out—was infectious, keeping us focused on problem-solving. It turned out we were mostly in alignment anyway, and had just made some small divergent, decisions over the course of the project that we're finally having to square, and now have a plan to. If you struggle with crucial conversations like I sometimes do, take a page from the Book of Kime and stay confidently curious.
Observation created almost 6 years agoFeaturing:Waseem D.Ethan M.Joshua A.Joseph A.We ask clarifying questionsWe get agreementsWe inspire others to do better workCommunityDesign CollaborationBack-end engineerFront-end engineerDiscovery engineerEpic shaperStory shaperI am grateful for how these 4 have been communicating on this project. This is a complex project for a variety of reasons. We are splitting up the frontend and the backend. Linking elements in our app is a difficult endeavor. The way these four have communicated to one another and to me has been such a joy. Whether it be Waseem posting killer updates in the channel, Joshua and Joseph presenting their findings on technical deep dives, or Ethan walking me through expectations on epic breakdown, everyone has chipped in to really get this off the ground.
I have been inspired to bring the level of clarity I have found here in other aspects of my job.
Observation created almost 6 years agoFeaturing:Waseem D.Ethan M.Alec R.We share before we're readyDecomposition & SequencingEpic shaperFront-end architectBack-end architectThis thread speaks to it: https://lessonly.slack.com/archives/CPHPVJSTH/p1574698910011200
This is a great discussion and approach to taking on what could be a larger project in Linked Elements. The team was able to work together to identify and slice up the work in order to get value into the hands of customer faster. Alec said it in his summary here:
We are going to structure the epics so at the end of each element the element is fully implemented. This means that at the end of epic two the paragraph element will have all of the linked element functionality. Then epic three will be the photo element fully implemented.
- This will mirror how the platform team rolled out a role management, a fully functional piece of a larger whole. This means we can learn more about the entire linked element process earlier.
- It gets to value quickly. We have been hearing for years from clients about the linked element functionality. With this plan, we will allow admins to do this whole process faster!
- It will make the delivery manager role more smooth. Because of this plan, each epic will look similar technically speaking. The first element will take the longest because we have to implement all of Linked elements but after we will be able to determine with reasonable accuracy how long each element takes to build start to finish.
As a result...
- This enables the squad in efforts of successful decomposition of ideas into shippable units of work to deliver customer value, validate P&E assumptions, or both
- Developing right-size slices of work that fit into the checkpoint and quarterly goals
- Thinking through the stack in a way that promotes flexible story creation (e.g. model/database, API, routes, react components, UI).
- Your squad consistently gets slices of work into customers hands for testing as early as possible in the lifespan of a project
Observation created about 6 years agohttps://app.clubhouse.io/lessonly/epic/27348#activity-32580
This is how acceptance criteria should be written.
This level of detail should be at the story level to ensure clarity.
However, I'd put this level of detail in the epic in scenarios where there is less design, or complicated logic, or a delivery team that doesn't find joy in pushing the boundaries on the details.
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