Whenever I write “SMRs” I think of smores, the Graham cracker, Hershey bar, and toasted-marshmallow confection that my family learned on my sister Carol’s return from a Girl Scout Brownie outing. I think our mother already knew of them, but my recollection is that’s when they entered my experience.
That is, perhaps, my playing with the notion of Specific Measurable Results, the outcomes in reality of defined, actionable tasks. SMRs as tasty morsels. I did not realize how much the term has been taken over by business-coaching lingo. I confess to first hearing the expression in 1993, from Landmark Forum Leader Linda Zraik, and it was already a catch-phrase in that setting.
The combination came up for me today when I realized that my nfoProjects Launch Sprint is too airy and lacks SMRs for me to chew on. Consequently, it is easy to let days go buy without measurable results. That was happening here:
I noticed this because there were no simple actionable work items that led to SMRs, even basic, produce-this-today ones.
Looking more closely, the labels on the stages that the boxes represent are conceptual. It made sense for envisioning and looking at opportunities in the available time, but that isn’t concrete enough.
Today, I have been stepping back to create SMRs for the stages themselves, and then for those individual results that I will produce on the path to the SMR of the stage.
Although it would be wise to start at the end point of the Sprint and work backwards, I will fudge and start by looking closely at the stages that I am managing over the current fortnight. I won’t go long without filling the gap from the objective back to what’s next right now, but I am forcing in some small immediate activities to ground my effort in the meantime.
The tracking spreadsheet is not going to include all of that detail. I will use my Personal Kanban board to manage them in a fluid way and also ensure that I provide supplemental envisioning, planning, and reflection on a weekly basis.
In the light of the next day, I see that I must step work backwards from the objective to the SMRs that pave the way to the result. That is the way to extract activities that are not essential to the outcome, and ensure that essential activities are accounted for.
I may chew up some slack in order to sort that out, and the critical path is going to become more serious.
Since it is very important to identify all of these factors as early as possible, I claim this approach is already providing important value toward having an achievable objective.
Now to lay in more SMRs.