Verification and Validation of the Organization's Strategic Objectives
Validate that everyone in the organization has the same shared understanding of the organization's strategic objectives and how these can be achieved — prior to any large commitment of resources.
Improvement Planning
Practices-Outcomes-Metrics (POM)
Representative POMs are described for Verification and Validation of the Organization's Strategic Objectives at each level of maturity.
- 1Initial
- Practice
- Leverage staff expertise.
- Outcome
- At least rudimentary verification and validation of the documented strategy occurs.
- Metric
- Number of staff with strategy alignment experience.
- Practice
- Leverage professional networks and emulate known successes.
- Outcome
- Basic approaches that are known to be effective for strategy verification and validation can be put in place quickly.
- Metric
- Number of approaches adapted from outside the company.
- 2Basic
- Practice
- Agree strategic objective priorities across departments.
- Outcome
- The organization has a shared understanding of the strategic objectives and their priorities.
- Metric
- Number of objections to proposed prioritizations.
- Practice
- Develop processes and procedures to verify and validate strategies.
- Outcome
- Processes and procedures add rigour and consistency in the performance of strategy verification and validation.
- Metric
- Number of processes available for strategy verification and validation.
- 3Intermediate
- Practice
- Coordinate and enable efforts across project portfolio components to deliver strategic goals and objectives.
- Outcome
- The focus of attention switches from the projects to the strategic goals that the combined projects deliver.
- Metric
- Number of project portfolio components reporting progress against the strategic objectives to which they contribute.
- Practice
- Analyse intermediate results for new objectives — e.g. planning permission granted subject to new access road on north boundary fence being open to traffic, which may mean that new access road priority may need to change.
- Outcome
- New explicit and implicit requirements are identified.
- Metric
- Number of new requirements (work) identified by analysis of intermediate steps.
- 4Advanced
- Practice
- Know and understand the assumptions upon which the strategic goals were set.
- Outcome
- Early warning indicators can be established.
- Metric
- Number of strategic objectives with rationale and justified logic argument.
- Practice
- Test and validate the assumptions underpinning the strategic goals — e.g. smart phones will replace PCs for many internet users — are the numbers stacking up?
- Outcome
- Early warning indicators can be established.
- Metric
- Number of strategic objects where assumptions were tested in the last time period (e.g. 6-months).
- 5Optimized
- Practice
- Extend strategy testing to the business ecosystem or as far as is appropriate.
- Outcome
- Knowing that the supplier has a sub-supply problem provides an early warning.
- Metrics
- Number of vendors and partners still aligned.
- Number of vendors and partners no longer aligned.
- Practice
- Work closely with strategic planning to maintain alignment and prioritized focus.
- Outcome
- Necessary changes are identified early, unnecessary effort can be avoided, and agile responses are enabled when needed.
- Metrics
- Number of attendees at strategic planning meeting.
- Number of all strategic planning meetings.
- Number of strategy change notifications.