Background and definitions
The GAITS platform enables teams to plan and capture progress toward completing Deliverables in an interactive display that provides a visual snapshot showing the status of a project. However, things don't always go as planned. As such, GAITS allows teams to show what happened as a result of completing a Deliverable.
Here are the options and definitions:
- As Planned: Things went more or less as expected.
- Minor Pivot: Things did not result as a expected and caused a minor change to plans
- Major Pivot: Things did not result as expected and caused a major change to plans
- Stopped Program: The result showed a fatal flaw which caused the team to abandon the program
- Launched New Program: The results identified a whole new opportunity that is being pursued in addition to the original program.
Lesson Learned
We have found that GAITS visual indication that a pivot has occurred is quite valuable as it helps all team members know if a pivot has ocurred. This way they can check the Deliverables that they are responsible for to see if they are impacted.
Differentiating between a major and minor pivot:
The following figure helps differentiate between a major and minor pivot:
Differentiation:
- Minor pivot: causes a change of plans moving forward
- Major pivot: causes the team to go back and redo prior work while also changing plans moving forward.