There is a particular kind of software company that does not use its own product. We have tried not to be one.
Toolsfactory is the company behind OGSM.online. We plan with OGSM and build with Scrum, and the interesting part is where the two meet. Keeping direction while staying able to change course is the whole problem, and the combination is how we handle it: OGSM holds the ambition and the choices, sprints deliver the work, and the actions in the plan are what the sprints are planned against.
Here is the actual cycle.
Our OGSM: from long-term ambition to concrete action
OGSM stands for Objective, Goals, Strategies and Measures: a plan that connects a long-term ambition to measurable goals and to work someone has their name against. Ours operates on four different clocks.
The strategic plan, every three to four years
Every three to four years we write a new plan. That means setting the ambition and the goals that make it concrete, doing enough internal and external analysis to name the challenges we actually face, making the strategic choices that answer those challenges, agreeing the KPIs that will tell us whether they are working, and turning it all into actions. The longer pieces of work become epics, which are then broken down into items a sprint can carry.
An annual update
Once a year the plan is reviewed and adjusted. This is where assumptions get tested against what has actually happened, and where the coming year’s actions are set. The ambition rarely changes; the route to it usually does, at least a little.
Quarterly: the strategy review
Each quarter we ask “are we doing the right things?” We look at the results, and we improve, accelerate or drop strategic choices on the basis of them. It is the session most likely to produce a decision nobody expected when it started.
Monthly: the action review
Each month we ask “are we doing things right?” Progress on actions, what is stuck, who needs help. Shorter, more practical, and the one that decides whether anything in the plan actually moves.
In practice: four-week sprints
The work itself runs in four-week sprints with five phases.
1. The action review starts and ends the sprint. The session evaluates the epics in progress, which is where most of the learning happens, and then prepares what comes next. That has two parts. Backlog refinement: updating the list from what the market is asking for and what our own security management system requires, and scoring items on value and effort. Sprint planning: picking the items with the best ratio between the two.
2. Realisation and testing. Owners pick up the work marked in progress. When something is finished it is tested against a definition of done that requires policy compliance, updated documentation and automated tests before anything counts as complete.
3. Acceptance testing. Testing against a test plan, covering existing functionality as well as new, because the unexpected impact is usually somewhere else.
4. Demo. Three audiences, deliberately. Colleagues see a live demonstration. Partners get a newsletter a week before launch. Administrators get their own.
5. Launch. Tested and approved functionality goes live, and users see a notification on screen telling them what changed.
OGSM.online is where all of this lives
Unsurprisingly, we run this in our own platform: the plan, the actions, the reports and the sessions. What it gives us that a document could not is the line from a sprint item back to a strategy, and from a strategy back to the ambition. When we ask whether an epic is worth another sprint, we can see what it was supposed to be contributing.
What this way of working gives us
Focus. Day-to-day work connects to the long-term ambition, and it is possible to check that rather than assume it.
Flexibility. Fixed moments of evaluation mean we can respond to change quickly without abandoning direction every time something urgent appears.
Transparency. Everyone can see how their own contribution relates to the wider goals.
Measurability. Clear indicators, kept over time, so progress is visible and so is its absence.
Improvement as a habit. The do, learn and adjust cycle is what turns a plan into something the organization gets better at rather than a document it produces annually.