This article will help you to understand the following.
Goals and initiatives help to accelerate growth and drive innovation by helping teams see how their work fits into the overall product objectives.
The Plan framework has 3 components
Goals: what youâre trying to accomplish
Initiatives: how youâll measure whether you achieve the goals
Features: what you'll be building to achieve the initiatives
Plan, Goals, and Initiatives
What is a Plan?
A plan is a strategy of the organization for a particular time frame focusing on business improvement or outcomes.
Every plan consists of multiple goals which are individually driven by metrics and are the directional vision of the pods.
What is a Goal?
Goals can be set up for the complete product team or just for a small team which brings in the flexibility to keep everyone aligned on what as a unit they want to achieve.
Defining goals can come either from the overall company strategy or from product leaders. But the sole reason to define goals is to make sure team members are not misled and are working towards some achievable outcomes rather than abstract product creation.
A goal can exist independently.
What are initiatives?
Initiatives are building blocks of the completion of which the goals can be achieved. They are the basic unit of a goal. Initiatives can be further linked with multiple features which lead to the completion of the initiative. An initiative can't exist independently. It always has to be defined as a goal.
What is a feature?
A feature in Zeda.io is a component or a part of a product that can be defined, tracked, shipped, and monitored by a product manager and also something which can independently drive value for your end-users.
Basic Actions:
To create a plan in Zeda.io, follow the below steps -
Go to the Plan Section and Click on Create Plan.
Enter the title (mandatory)
You need to add a timeframe (mandatory) which is a period under which you want to achieve the Plan.
Click on Create a plan.
Once the plan is created you can add a goal
Click on add goal.
Add the title and the description.
Define the type of the goal
With Metric
Non-Metric
Add an assignee
Click on create a goal
Once the goal is created you can create initiatives
Click on Create initiatives against goals
Add the title and description
Define the type
With Metric
Non-Metric
Define weightage( It is a confidence assumption taken by the initiative creator on how much contribution it has to the goal)
Add the assignee
Add the due date for the initiatives
Click on Add initiatives.
Adding features to the initiatives.
To align a feature to an initiative, follow the below steps -
Click on any initiative from the main goals dashboard or from an individual goal page.
Click on the 'Align to a feature' button against the initiatives
Select the features from the list which you want to align to that initiative to track the progress.
Check-in (Progress and Status)
The goals and initiatives require proper tracking to check how the team performance is aligning with the goals they want to achieve and if the goals are not achievable or the priorities change then how should the team modify the planning.
You can do regular check-ins on your goals and initiatives to keep everyone updated about the progress.
Goals
To log a check-in, follow the below steps -
Open a goal from the goals dashboard.
Click on the 'Check-in' CTA.
Enter the status to log a check-in. The progress of a goal can not be manually updated.
You can also view past check-ins on the goal under the Activity tab.
Progress of a goal is calculated by (total completed initiatives)/ (total initiatives) for the goal. A completed initiative is defined as an initiative that has achieved 100% progress.
Initiatives
To log a check-in, follow the below steps -
Open an initiative from the goals dashboard or under a goal.
Click on the 'Check-in' CTA.
Enter the status to log a check-in. The progress of an initiative can be manually updated or set to automatic updation.*
You can also view past check-ins on the initiative under the Activity tab.
Progress of a goal is calculated by (total completed feature)/ (total feature) for the goal. A completed initiative is defined as an initiative that has achieved 100% progress.
Layout
Goals
The team will be able to create and track goals and initiatives. Also, the team will be able to check in on the status of the goals and initiatives.
Strategy map:
The team will be able to track the complete list of the goals and initiatives on one whiteboard.
This can be used to discuss and improve strategy.
Roadmap:
The Kanban board view from the roadmap will be shown in this sub-section for all the features which are linked to all the initiatives present in the strategy plan
On clicking on the feature, it will open the feature details side tray
Advanced Actions
Move Goal:
Go to the strategy map by opening the specific Plan
Select the goal that you want to move to a different plan
Click on the 3 dotted option
Click on the move option.
Select the destination plan for the goal that you want to move
click on the save.
Opt-Out initiative out of the goal ( Impact analysis)
Go to the strategy map by opening the specific Plan.
Click on the initiatives card and select the 3 dot option.
click on the opt-out option.
this will give an impact analysis of the initiatives.
Click on the make changes to save.
How is expected calculated:
Only for metric-driven goals.
E = Start + ((Sum of weightage%)*(Target-Start))
Zeda Confidence Number:
Zeda Confidence Number (ZCN) is an indicator of how likely the plan or goal seems achievable. This is calculated on the basis of initiative check-in on the status of the team.
ZCN (plan) = (Sum of ZCN from each goal)/ Total number of the goal under the plan
ZCN Confidence Number (goal) = [(1*Achieved initiatives)+(0.75*On-track initiatives)+(0.25*Needs-work initiative)+(0.1*Off-track initiatives)]/Total initiatives *100
Coming from the status of initiatives under a goal. Weightage on status basis score can be calculated.
Planned and Dropped will have weight 0, thus not included.
Value prop: If this goal is achievable or not, considering the initiatives
ZCN TAGS basis the calculated value
Achievable (100-80%),
Looks good (>80-50%),
Need to relook (>50-30%),
Needs attention (>30%)