I hear a lot of confusion around a bunch of words.
These words are “mission”, “vision”, “strategy”, “roadmap”, “backlog”.
I get it: it’s all a bit vague, and they all connect together somehow, but let’s put some clarity in, so that you can stop hearing them used interchangeably as much.
Let’s start with Mission.
Your Mission is your why. That’s it. Why are you in business? Why does this org exist? Why does your team get up in the morning and go to work?
Once you have your why, you can envision what the world would look like if you accomplished all the things with your business, or org, or team, or project, or your life, even.
That’s your Vision.
That’s your story. If everything goes as you aim, what’s that looking like. It’s your “North Star”, your far away ideal objective.
Then, your Strategy.
Your Strategy is the framework that allows you to make aligned decisions and choices. It should ideally encourage decisions and choices that drive towards your vision.
At this point we get in the nitty gritty of execution, with your Roadmap.
That is your plan to get to the vision (or to some intermediate, realistic step in a non-trivial amount of time: you can have e.g. yearly roadmaps). Your strategy drives it. You use it to stay on the right track to accomplish your goals.
Your roadmap should typically be an ordered list of all the things people can expect from you, as well as of what they actually should not expect.
And finally, your Backlog.
Your backlog is the list of actual things you need to deliver, in some specific order, to actually deliver the work.
That is where all the stories and projects and day to day stuff lives. Here you ask, “what’s slowing you down”, or “do we need to rediscuss our approach”.
So, to recap:
- Your Mission is not your Vision
- Your Strategy is not your Roadmap
- Your Roadmap is not your Backlog.
Any questions?