Use POAD to plan our a Sprint for a Series of Tasks of key feature

You’ve got a great idea—or a bunch of tasks. But how do you take that excitement and quickly turn it into something agile teams can use? You want stories, epics, sprints… sure. But first, you need to make sure the work is tied to a purpose, with clear objectives and deliverables. When you are grooming (cleaning up) an idea, breaking it down (decomposing), the goal is to make sure features are tied back to what the purpose is (value) and the objectives (e.g. what is minimum viable (Must Have), and what is needed immediately after that (Should Have) and what could be added (Could Have) or nice to have if successful (Nice to Have) – Snuck in the MoSCoW Prioritization).

Core Problem: Let’s face it: most IT projects fail. The number gets quoted as high as 75% (see the last bullet in this article), and while the exact percentage may vary, the causes don’t—scope creep, and features that aren’t tied to any clear purpose. That’s where POAD shines. It’s a fast, structured way to clarify value before burning sprint time. POAD brings a simple facilitation and capture tool which can be in a document or notepad before creating the tickets which get us all a bit myopic.

OK – what is a POAD? – Purpose, Objectives, Activities, Deliverables

Enter POAD: Purpose, Objectives, Activities, Deliverables. A lightweight structure to move ideas into action without jumping straight into timeline-driven waterfall thinking.

POAD (pronounced Poh-Add – (Should harken this RO-ADS scene)) is a simple scaffolding to help bridge early brainstorming and formal sprint planning. It’s the missing link between “great idea” and “let’s write some user stories.”

• Purpose = Why are we doing this? Who are you doing this for? What do they say needs addressed? Also, what is the Goal?  Furthermore,

• Objectives = What outcomes or epics are we aiming for? What are the steps?

• Activities = What stories or tasks get us there? What do you need to get done? And what does it cost?

• Deliverables = What is the end solution? What proves we’re done?

After the brainstorming, we ask the task lead to capture in 1 hour the purpose, objectives, activities, and deliverables (POAD) using our POAD skeleton 1-pager template. This simply takes the brainstorming and makes sure we have covered the bases for the project proposal. We take a 1-hour planning task to propose a project or one-time task over a week. This can be captured in a document, notepad or a sheet – before you drop it in your favorite scrum or kanban board.

Once your POAD is done, mapping it into agile is simple: Take an Epic (Purpose), break it into user stories (Objectives), figure out tasks for the story (Activities), and agree to the sprint outcome (Deliverables). Put those four words together, and you get the acronym called POAD. Using a POAD, in 1 hour, without learning a whole new jargon, you can use what most people know in making a project proposal.

• Purpose → Becomes your Initiative

• Objectives → Map to Epic

• Activities → Become Stories

• Deliverables → Inform Acceptance Criteria

Streamline the Sprint Planning Bridge:

This is just a lightweight way to avoid that “Hey this will be cool, we can crush it in two weeks, but turns out, you didn’t think of X, Y, and Z” problem. Of course, it is all risk-based, so if you believe you have minimized the risk, or have very little impact if you are late or over costs or under-quality, etc., then skip it, and just jump on in. POAD isn’t about slowing you down. It’s about catching assumptions, risks, and effort realism early—before you get sprint-deep and realize X, Y, and Z were never considered. Use the POAD as a 1-hour sanity check before starting a sprint. Keep it to one page. Use it to expose assumptions, tame scope, and align value early.

• Once you have conducted your brainstorming session, copy the template to keep it to one page. Start with 1 hour, then review with your task lead.
• Use the timebox of 1 hour to keep the scope, project goals, and time spent on it humble. Otherwise, the scope creep monster will get you like the other 75%.
• The skeleton will help you see your normal predilections and biased weaknesses from your brainstorm, but saying out loud to others will help even more.
• During the review, edit it and promise yourselves to keep to less than 2 pages and less than 1 hour review.
• And hey—if it’s a low-risk task and everyone’s clear? Skip it. Otherwise, this simple tool will help you avoid becoming another project that missed the mark.

Project Proposal POAD Template (Project Size: Very Small)

Purpose (Nor more than 2-3 sentences)

In X weeks, using W staff, we’ll deliver Y, which improves customer effectiveness by Z and business efficiency by Q.

The premises behind MBT – the line of sight is still applicable. What is the purpose of this 2-week idea?

Make a statement that addresses scope, time, qualities, and cost

• Scope – what is the end product of the project through what 3-4 major value chain steps
• Time – how long the project is, calendar time
• Qualities – what the customer outcomes (effectivity) and/or business outcomes (efficiencies) are
• Cost – what resources are used (people, purchases)

Objectives (No more than 5 Epics)

Mention the 3-4 value chain steps on how you’ll achieve your purpose. Capture the measures for each of the qualities by each value chain step, communicating if you are achieving in an iterative, waterfall, or agile manner – or waterfall agile. Example Steps in a value chain are (Aware, Familiar, Consider, Purchase; Acquire, Produce, Generate, Deliver; Find, Get, Use; Extract, Transform, Load; Model, View, Control)

Activities (Stories to achieve each epic)

Whether agile or waterfall, organize your tasks by Discover, Define, Design, Develop/Do, and Debrief steps, noting the Level of effort in time. As you break down activities, apply the MoSCoW prioritization: Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Won’t Have (for now). This helps balance excitement with reality and prevents “everything is a priority” chaos.

Under each Step, bulletize your activities using organized by project phase:

• Discover – Identify solution, triage risks

• Define – Document rules, understand data/processes

• Design – Create templates, run tests

• Do – Build, QA, deploy

• Debrief – Capture backlog, prep next iteration

Deliverables (Output Acceptance Criteria)

Make sure you have deliverables that address the scope of each activity and address the full stack of possible deliverables – Performance, Process, Data, Application, Technology, Management, and Security. For each deliverable, note the calendar days from the start take the activity time multiply it by three, and then add any immovable time gaps (i.e. vacation, other projects, events). Why Multiply by three? Well, we normally multiply by two because we follow the theory that most people estimate the “do” part, and not the “prepare” and “accept” parts. These steps add up to 50% each of the effort, then add another one for weekends and sick time.