In this conversation with Agile industry veteran Evan Campbell, we talk about Strategic Agility, and particularly, the need for resource fluidity. This plays out in any organization’s portfolio management process. Evan sees too much emphasis on quantitative models for prioritization of innovative experiments that often deny resources to innovative projects because the risks and benefits are so hard to quantify in advance. Rather than starve innovative projects, we need to reserve capacity for innovation knowing that not all efforts will succeed. We talk about how hard it can be to apply OKRs to long term capital intensive projects, and explore why these projects get bloated with too many features before they even get off the ground. OKRs can speed up the process and eliminate blind alleys by mitigating risks and exploring constraints early in the process.
