by Zack Brown, Partner Solutions Strategist, Atlassian
Introduction
Atlassian has recently published a white paper outlining how we define Enterprise Strategy and Planning and as someone who has been a SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) for close to a decade now, I wanted to provide an summary translation for practitioners on how I see this working with SAFe and other frameworks.
Introducing six core facets
Core to this white paper is the introduction of six “facets” of Enterprise Strategy and Planning that come together flexibly to define an organization’s current and future approach. Below is a quick explainer of these facets, their purpose and some examples:
| Core Facet | Purpose | Example | Translation |
| Goals | To align team efforts towards common objectives | Setting a company-wide goal to improve customer satisfaction. | Instead of using OKRs or systems like AARRR or HEART, this facet focuses on making goals work for everyone |
| Work | To visualize the connection between daily tasks and strategic goals. | Linking individual tasks to a broader project goal in Jira. | This is the primary way folks interact with Atlassian tools today, to manage their work |
| Talent | To ensure accountability and visibility of team contributions. | Identifying team members responsible for specific objectives. | Who is working on what, both in an individual sense and a team sense |
| Funds | To manage financial resources effectively in relation to strategic priorities. | Budgeting for a new software tool as part of operational costs. | Both CapEx and OpEx, tracking the costs that it actually takes to achieve work or goals |
| Systems | To ensure that the right tools and processes are in place to support strategy. | Utilizing a project management tool to streamline workflows. | All the tools and platforms it takes to account for goals, NFRs – and bringing hidden costs to the front to maintain a sustainable pace of development |
| Updates | To keep all stakeholders informed about progress and changes. | Regularly scheduled updates on project status shared via email or a dashboard. | Not just the facets themselves, but the conversation around facets – acknowledging the importance of the three Cs, but tracked in a digital, distributed format |
As you can see, these facets align closely with data elements across the Atlassian platform, something that our product teams have been working very specifically on improving. Goals are an integrated experience across the entire Atlassian platform, visible in every application. Work can be tracked in JSM, Jira, Focus or Jira Align but, in all cases, the products are built to be able to navigate from the work you did today to the long-term company strategy without losing context of who is working on it and how it’s going.
This white paper reinforces concepts that have been researched for years on how difficult transformations can be and proposes that Strategy should be an organizational discipline that manages outcomes the same way that PLM or DevOps have become organizational disciplines that manage product or developer quality.
So what do you do with these facets?
There are a few things you can do with these concepts, as outlined in the paper:
- Understand and adjust the facets together – that is to say, these elements are not independent of each other, they come together in smaller groups or together to create strategic priorities, which can improve your personal, team, line of business, or company’s ability to self-govern.
- ASSEMBLE the facets to create focus areas – examine your current priorities. Are there any facets missing? You may have a good view to what work needs to be done, who should best be working on it, and how it ladders to company priorities – but is it adequately funded?
Making it work
Different leaders in an organization want to focus on different facets of strategic priorities. Maybe you look at each priority through a solution-driven lens, a portfolio management view, or a cost-focused lens. Atlassian’s tools allow you to create custom views that cut right to the important facets for your perspective while keeping the bigger picture connected.
In large companies, ways of working are often different across lines of business. Sometimes this is intentionally driven by leaders; other times it’s due to an incremental transformation in progress. Regardless, leaders across these different groups often need to collaborate (extensively!) to complete work across disparate systems in order to achieve their goals.
But why is that important?
Atlassian provides opportunities and a platform, which allows individuals and partners to customize to their needs. This approach is consistent with what Jira has been for organizations for 23 years now, and it helps solidify what we mean when we talk about helping organizations create a system of work.
This is not meant to be a replacement framework for anything that currently exists, nor an evolution of those frameworks, but more of a way to bring your existing system of work to life. This paper is a platform-led perspective that can augment expertise you as an individual and platforms as practices can bring to any company and their strategic priorities.
Conclusion
My own experience
In my short time working at Atlassian, it’s clear this is what everyone wants from us – and in my 10 years in consulting before that, I would have loved to have researched positions from my technology partners that help reinforce organizational change efforts that stalled for various reasons.
I think this paper will be helpful to you, so take a look for yourself, considering these things:
- What facets am I focusing on in my role, and how are they connected to our overall strategic priorities?
- Browse the ESP maturity model. Take a look at how leading organizations leverage ESP and consider how it applies to your context, and how you might use this information to support your ongoing transformation.
- Think about how this model can support you in your specific role (people + process), your Atlassian product instances (tooling), and write down one change you want to make based off of what you’ve learned.
Last but not least, please send us feedback. Every approach evolves over time as new information becomes available, and as we broaden the collection of tools available to you to help with Enterprise Strategy and Planning, you can bet we’ll be evolving this approach with practitioner feedback.
About the Author:
Zack Brown is a Partner Solution Strategist with Atlassian where he partners with the biggest consulting firms and enterprises in the world to help solve problems with the Atlassian platform of products.
