Define success

First, define what the challenge is and the reason you want to face it.

Once everyone in the team understands the challenge, the team will visualise what success looks like. In this step, everyone on the team should add a note for what success looks like to them, in their specific role only.

Now define success as a team, as well as what success for the overall project should be.

In this step, a team leader should start by creating a definition of success based on all the comments.

Once you have the definition of success, discuss with your team how you are going to measure success. Try to list qualitative and quantitative measurements. Add those metrics to the board, as well.

In this step, the team will discuss how to strategically divide the project or objective that was just defined by everyone using SMART milestones (Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Relevant, and Time-base). Creating milestones will help the team stay on track and gives everyone something to work toward.

The team leader will select and define milestones based on all the notes added and information from previous steps. The team can comment or make suggestions. The final decision will be made in the next step, so everyone should help the team lead to improve each milestone. Make sure all milestones are Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Relevant, and Time-based.

In this step, the team lead will create a clear definition. The success statement will clearly highlight the impact the project or idea must have on those outside the project to be considered successful. These statements should be consistent with the project goal and the mission of the organization and also provide information on measurable project outcomes.

Add a success statement with a clear roadmap to reach success. For example: "We are designing a new online course that will help our users develop their self-esteem. All our products follow our core mission so we can focus on “providing convenient ways to feel better about themselves.” We will finalise this online course in the next two months. It will contain X, C, V and Y, and 30 min face-to-face coaching sessions. We think a successful course is an online course that helps more than 300 users per month and can be used easily anywhere with a phone. It also should be easy to learn and to be available for practice at any time. As a team, we define success as delivering a course that is being tested by our team two weeks before being launched with the finalised project being available five days before launching. We want to make sure we are ready to focus on launching the course. To make sure we are ready to be successful, we have four milestones…"