CHAPTER 1 - Terms

From the book organisational-abilities

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Outcomes, Options and Tasks

There are many frameworks, methods and practices for breaking work down. I like to keep things simple, and where possible universal.

An Outcome is a high level business objective. Something that happens as the result of something else.

To get an outcome, you need Options. These can be actions or outputs that once completed contribute to the outcome in a measurable way. There may be many options that would satisfy an outcome. It’s up to you to decide which is best.

To carry out an Option, whether it’s building something or doing something, you’ll need to carry out Tasks.

An example:

Outcome: Increased market share

Options: New social share features on website. Advertising campaign. Takeover competitor.

Big Options can be broken down into small Options - we’ll get to why that’s a good idea and look at some examples in Chapter 3.

Some common terms and how they relate:

• User stories - called such to emphasise the value of understanding within the team, and from the perspective of who a feature is for, what it is and what the purpose of it is. A user story would be an option as would any parent big picture item, often called an “Epic”.
• Requirements - these would be a subset of an Option. Criteria to tell us what should be included. Rarely of value on their own, typically in Agile requirements manifest as acceptance criteria within user stories.
  • Bets - I like the implication that we don’t know if it will work. All options in the complex context are bets. When you move into the simple or complicated context and you start dealing with sure things, the term “option” holds better and more broadly.

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