TL;DR
The NRM Continuous North Star Approach is designed to prioritize focus, alignment, and clarity across the organization by rallying around one high-impact goal at a time. With it we leverage nimble methods that go beyond agile to not only make the magic happen but to improve how it happens. Here are some of the high-level details:
- Focus on finding and then delivering one North Star at a time; it should be impactful, achievable within ~3 months, and easy for teams to align with.
- Use Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platforms like Jira or Azure DevOps (ADO) to track North Star progress and prevent distraction.
- A healthy Rythm of Business is highly recommended for success with Continuous North Star and the prescribed events involved.
- Interesting North Star Stats reveal impact observed in other companies.
- Our Continuous North Star Dojo Jumpstart along with Continuous North Star Maturity Model combine to accelerate learning and adoption of Continuous North Star approach resulting in higher levels of maturity leading to greater proficiency, mastery, and results.
- Here you can find many of the Nimble Business Planning Terms that we use frequently.
Overview
At Nimble Risk Management we find that The NRM Continuous North Star Approach serves us well to purposefully drive our vision forward. As is the case with many companies we have a lot that we want to accomplish but have limited time and resources. Because of that we need to make smart choices about how to optimize capacity enduring it is applied to where it matters most. We understand and appreciate that extreme focus on the single most important goal has many benefits. There are many sources of distraction, disruption, and chaos lurking about and a solid North Star mindset can help establish a filter that keeps all or most of that noise at bay.
We do practice what we preach and have our own North Star goal that is always present to guide our efforts. With it we ensure progress toward reaching that goal. Nothing else matters as much for right now. If work surfaces that is not related to our North Star, we capture it for future consideration but do not allow it to disrupt the current one. Our North Stars are each significant but broken down into smaller related subgoals. These smaller goals enable incremental change with each contributing to the primary North Star goal. As a result, we gain the benefits along the way which also builds enthusiasm and inertia.
The NRM Continuous North Star Dojo Jumpstart
In a nutshell a North Star goal helps to establish the direction by which all effort is to be applied. A well-crafted North Star goal helps everyone regardless of function ensure that their efforts are aligned to help reach that common goal. This has the added and often underappreciated side effect of reducing change related risk or friction that would be a typical obstacle when competing priorities or biases are present.
We do have an NRM Continuous North Star Dojo Jumpstart that makes it possible for you to hit the ground running with implementing the NRM Continuous North Star Approach. What follows are some of the high-level details of this approach.
General Guidelines around North Star goals
The guidelines are fairly simple:
| North Star Guidelines | Description |
|---|---|
| Only one North Star goal at a time | Pick up and run with the single most valuable North Star goal to make happen. All effort and capacity regardless of function is devoted to achieving the North Star goal. Anything else no matter how well intentioned is wasted effort. |
| Real impact toward business goals | The goal must have a real impact on the business, but it can and should have smaller sub-goals that are related. |
| Easy to communicate and remember | The goal must be easy to communicate and remember so that teams can reference and influence their decisions and contributions towards achieving it. |
| Stick with it | Stick with it through to completion then pick up a new North Star |
| Small incremental vs boil the ocean | Keep your North Star goal small enough to be doable and of value but big enough to have impact. |
| Can be done within a quarter or less | Ideally a North Star goal can be accomplished within 3 months or less with reasonable effort. |
Find your North Star
Realizing that you need a North Star is a very important first step. At first it might be very difficult to find the one North Star that matters most at this point in time. It is important to harvest North Star ideas from all over and at all levels. Leaders get the big bucks but might not have the best or most impactful ideas. Proper inclusion with the people doing the work is far more likely to generate or inspire better and more impactful opportunities. At the same time such collaborations help to build buy-in and reduce friction while the plan takes shape.
Here we want to explain the significance of finding your North Star, but clients can refer to this page for details in how to go about Finding your North Star.
Using North Star within your ALM platform of choice
Your ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) platform is where you either are or ought to be managing work. Regardless of you do this practice helps to bring visibility, order, and tracking to what could otherwise be chaos. An ALM like Jira or ADO or others tend to be full featured and support various ways of working. In many cases these ALM platforms allow for customization and adjustments to build out your own system or tweak an existing one to work the way you need it to.
We highly recommend using your ALM to track and manage your North Stars along with the work related to each one. Otherwise, effort might be lost or confused fracturing alignment & focus. When that happens distractions tend to rule the day and complicate your ability to compete effectively.
Here we just wanted to introduce the importance of using an ALM to drive North Star progress. We have detailed guides for clients covering both ADO and Jira regarding North Star ALM integration. Others could likely be adapted or let us know what you are using to manage work, and we will see what we can do to lower the barrier to entry for your situation.
NRM Continuous North Star Rhythm of Business
Ideally working with a North Star is not a one and done proposition. You have opted to run with North Star because of the promise for better outcomes, focus, alignment, and clarity across the org. So, it should be fairly obvious that for continued success North Star execution needs to be perpetual and continuous. Beyond that it must dynamically evolve to work best for your situation and the way that you operate.
While it is true that there is to be only one North Star in progress at a given time it is also true that we will reach that North Star at some point. When we do there should be a celebration of this accomplishment, but also a well baked ritual to identify the next North Star to run towards.
Here is a quick overview the explains the North Star events involved:
| North Star Events | Description |
|---|---|
| North Star Creation | A new North Star is initially created as a concept. These can be rough thoughts in the beginning with the expectation that they will be refined over time. We recommend starting with a good template to follow to ensure they get a good start toward Definition of Ready and eventually qualify as active North Star. This can happen at any time and be created by anyone on the team and will likely be reviewed in the next North Star Review. |
| Monthly North Star Review | The monthly review and refinement session intended to demonstrate progress, make adjustments if needed. This is also a good chance to refine future North Stars ensuring they meet your Definition of Ready (DoR). A good backlog of North Stars makes you better equipped to select the most valuable North Star to run towards next when the time comes. |
| North Star Rising | The quarterly event that serves as the boundary between the current and next North Star efforts. During this you will close down the current North Star and celebrate what was learned and accomplished. At this time, you will want to take the time to learn from the experience and collaboratively improve how it is done. Here you can do a retrospective and/or conduct surveys. In the end you select the next most valuable and impactful North Star for everyone to run with. This helps to create a rallying point around the goal and gives teams the opportunity to define how they contribute and coordinate dependencies. |
| North Star Annual Planning | The yearly event that partially serves as a deadline to submit new North Star Concepts, explore external influences, and to celebrate the gains realized during the year |
| North Star Infusion | As needed whenever a significant realization occurs that could complicate or seriously derail the current North Star. In most cases teams are empowered to do the right thing so long as they are contributing to the North Star. This event is triggered when the North Star becomes at risk as something significant was learned along the way. This could be an opportunity to recalibrate between dependencies. |
| North Star Collapse | This would be a situation more invasive than an infusion like an external event causing a major shift in priority. This could invalidate or alter the priority of the current North Star relative to the disruption suggesting that we need to make big adjustment or even put a halt to the current effort. |
That said this is just the high-level introduction to the NRM Continuous North Star Approach. Details on what this involves is limited to clients and can be found here at NRM Continuous North Star Approach Details.
Popular North Star examples to ponder
There are likely as many possible North Stars as there are stars in the actual universe. While a North Star represents the primary goal it often can and should be broken down into several lesser goals that are related. Each subgoal must be clearly linked as a contributing factor that is essential to reaching the high-level objective. Many would agree that small goals stack up to represent incremental progress that you can benefit from now. As a result, these smaller goals accelerate and even increase chances for success in reaching a larger goal.
For each company their North Star is precious and uniquely context specific to their situation. Here are a few North Stars examples with subgoals that we have seen that could be a source of inspiration.
- Enable the Continuous North Star approach
- Educate all on North Star concepts
- Run at least one North Star project to completion
- Review the results and consider next steps – do more or try something else
- Increase sales 50%
- Increase incoming opportunities through site traffic
- Streamline intake to increase conversions from opportunity to client
- Secure referrals and case studies to broadcast wins
- Reduce time to market by 40%
- Optimize product design flow increasing chance for success
- Explore Design Thinking to ensure we are making what customers want
- Reduce costs by 20% of process X
- Learn Flow Engineering process
- Formalize a continuous improvement think tank
- Run at least 3 Flow Engineering cycles
- Review and broadcast results
- Increase confidence in performance that relies on suppliers
- Invite to observe and participate in Flow Engineering session involving supplier
- Explore supplier alternatives or synergy
- Thwart downtime by 33%
- Mine performance data to reveal root cause of major downtime events
- Formalize improvement effort focused on eliminating or reduce the most impactful downtime event
North Star Metrics
Remain leery of vanity or proxy metrics like story points delivered or lines of code. North Star metrics need to be simple and designed to reflect real progress toward the ultimate goal along with the subgoals. There are metrics tied to the North Star goals but there can also be metrics around application of the North Star approach that can reveal areas to improve.
These have more to do with measuring success around North Star adoption as a way to operate. Here are some of the most popular real metrics often applied to North Star adoption efforts:
| Common North Star Metrics | Description |
|---|---|
| Did you reach the North Star? | Simple YES or NO. Regardless of the answer take the time to reflect on how this could have been better. From this you can learn how to create better North Star Goals or the |
| Did reaching the North Star goal realize the benefits that were projected | YES or NO, but could have qualifiers like not quite or nearly meaning the projection was off slightly. Similarly, you could have exceeded goals which is also noteworthy. |
| How long did it take to reach the goal? | Assuming a North Star intends to consume most of a quarter – what percentage of that time was actually used. This could be more or less than a quarter but could help to indicate how you planned and estimated. |
| How many other unique future north stars did this effort spawn? | This could indicate a degree of focus meaning that you were able to stick to the plan over absorb new observations. At the same time this could indicate a high level of interest and commitment across the org to influencing what we do next. Also tracking the number of hits on the same topic could be a strong indicator of what to do next that would come with a high level of enthusiasm. |
| Fully realized impact. | Here you want to wait through the execution of the next North Star cycle to calculate the full impact of what you just did. Immediately after closing a North Star you might still only have speculation about the impact. In some cases only time will tell. So we suggest capture a baseline before you started and then again after completed and then again after the next north star is completed. This way you have a better picture explaining the real impact to the business. |
| The percentage of North Star effort over the percent of Non-North Star effort (%NS/%NNS) applied during the cycle. | The shows the amount of effort applied to the North Star goal over effort applied to unrelated things. Ideally this would be very close to 1 or 100%. That said some effort and functions may have no impact which might be worth looking in to. Some may not be in a position to contribute which could impact morale and also worth looking in to and making adjustments. |
| Quantity of improvements suggested | At the end of each cycle there should be a retrospective that can help drive improvements. As part of this you should collect improvement suggestions. The quantity of suggestions indicates a level of interest in seeing North Star succeed. |
The metrics involved in this journey are just as important as the goals that you aim to achieve. Creating North Star Metrics is both art and science that needs to be baked into your process ensuring that a North Star is ready for action and meets the Definition of Ready (DoR).
Interesting North Star Stats
| North Star Stats | Stats | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Improved Alignment and decision making | 20-40% | Indeed.com |
| Customer-centric outcomes increasing customer satisfaction | 15-35% | GeeksForGeeks |
| Optimized Product Strategy leading to better prioritization of | 25-50% | Amplitude.com |
North Star Maturity Levels
NRM can help to get you going with North Star Approach or reach higher levels of maturity for amplified success. Our NRM North Star Dojo Jumpstart meets you where you are in this journey and gets you moving forward with the NRM North Star Approach. Beyond that thought we have additional guidance on how you can make progress toward higher levels within the Continuous North Star Maturity Model.
The maturity level of your company regarding the NRM Continuous North Star Approach can be summed up as follows:
