Intake Funnels and Definitions of Ready: Measuring Progress in Agile

In this episode of Definitely Maybe Agile, Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock dive into the nuances of intake funnels and definitions of ready—key concepts for ensuring work progresses effectively. They explore how traditional project delivery mindsets differ from product-driven approaches, emphasizing the need for adaptability, continuous learning, and decision points that prevent wasted effort.

From setting clear entry criteria to measuring throughput and pivoting when needed, they break down how teams can structure their workflows to prioritize value-driven outcomes. Whether you're refining your backlog, managing stakeholder expectations, or optimizing delivery processes, this episode provides practical insights to help you navigate uncertainty while keeping momentum.

This week´s takeaways: 

• Clear intake process – Define criteria to assess idea readiness before execution.
• Product vs. project mindset – Embrace uncertainty and pivot as needed.
• Measure progress – Use checkpoints and throughput tracking to prioritize work.

Tune in to learn how to balance discipline with flexibility and ensure your work moves forward with intention!

Chapters

• 0:32 Introduction to intake funnels and definitions of ready
• 4:47 Measuring throughput and defining success
• 12:25 The importance of saying no and embracing efficiency

Transcript

Peter: 0:04

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and David Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale.

Dave: 0:12

Hello and welcome. How are you doing, Peter? I am doing very well, Dave.

Peter: 0:18

I see we're starting the other way around today, you know.

Dave: 0:21

I'm throwing in the best line that I have as early as I can I see?

Peter: 0:26

I see I understand you're feeling a little tired today.

Dave: 0:29

It's been a long day it's been a long day, huh Well.

Peter: 0:32

So on those grounds, if I may introduce the topic of the day we're going to be talking about, well, intake funnels might be a way of describing it, if you like definitions of ready. How do we measure that things are actually moving forward and, most importantly, how do we set up the appropriate criteria and checkpoints? If you like to say, okay, we need to stop this now, and we're having a lot of discussion, before we started this, around what that actually means, how you tie these different things together, and what a successful version of this looks like.

Dave: 1:15

So can I try and put a baseline in place? I'm doing a lot of software delivery lifecycle work and sort of project delivery life cycles versus product delivery life cycles, and I think this really highlights the difference between a product or innovation delivery life cycle mindset or mentality and a traditional project delivery, one which is we started with. What's the definition of ready look like? How do I know we should start the next phase, let's say, of a project or any piece of work that we're doing and where it kind of unravels really quickly to the point of which is a project delivery mindset? Once a piece of work is funded, the go ahead is given. It's carried all the way through to completion Right. So if I have a piece of work, that project is approved financially, the money is allocated to it. The most software delivery life cycles, for example, are going to carry that piece of work right through all of the different stage gates with the intention of safely managing risk all the way, get to the end and deliver that project.

Peter: 2:22

And in that you're going to have worked out everything that I could possibly need for this thing to go forward. I'm going to have worked out all of the different pieces. I've got no opportunity to change any of that. It just is what it is and that's the way it's going to be.

Dave: 2:37

And where we wanted to come back into is, if I look at a product delivery lifecycle, we're dealing with uncertainties, we're uncovering information as we go through, and so part of that means that some of that information that we uncover as we go through might lead us to decide to abandon that piece of work because we're learning something that means it's never going to behave the way we expected it to, or more opportunity comes along that's easier for us to get to, more aligned with our strategy, whatever it might be better aligned with our customer expectations, and so we might move to somewhere else, so that uncovering of new information can lead us to abandon or change direction. Pivot, if you like.

Peter: 3:21

Yes, and we were talking through this in terms of and you can think of it as the funnel. We've got all of these ideas coming in, all of these things we think might work to move the product forward. We can't do all of them, we've only got a limited amount of capacity. We've got to pick and choose which ideas work. But we want to have as many opportunities to learn in play at any one given moment in time as we possibly can, and so we, to help with that, we set up what we called lift. Like definitions are ready and we were debating the definition ready definition of done.

Peter: 3:58

It depends on where you think of in the in the life cycle. I like to think of the, the full kit concept. So I'm not going to start anything. Until I know all of these things about it, I'm not going to move to the next piece. So that definition already can help define that. Like, have I defined what the work is? Have I defined what outcome I'm looking for? This type of uh, this piece, just to get started, and if I I haven't, then go away and define those things better for me.

Dave: 4:26

Or have we prepared it? Have I got the input, the sign-offs that I need if I'm assets that need to be in place so that we can actually build whatever it is that we're moving forward to build? So I think that definition of ready as a kickoff point works really nicely, but it also leads to a couple of things. Which is one is works really nicely, but it also leads to a couple of things. Which is one is let's say, I've got commitment from you to come in and help with something. We also have to measure throughput on that. So work that goes past, that meets the definition of ready and starts working on it. The way we can then identify how well that definition of ready is working is by tracking that throughput to make sure that we're delivering at a pace that is expected, whatever that pace of delivery might be.

Peter: 5:10

Yeah, and we also have to start to look at and where we're talking about this some of these ideas could take a considerable amount of time to fully implement in the entire grand outcome that you're looking for. So we have to think about, well, what are the smaller chunks of value we could potentially deliver as a part of that? That would enable us to learn whether this is the right direction to go in, if this is doing what we need it to do, and so that we also have a point in time at which we can look at it and say, yes, this was a good idea. We should continue to the next phase. We should do the next part of this, which is different, as you were saying at the beginning there, from a project where very often it's you've already laid out all the requirements and now that we're on the road and it's being funded, you're going to continue this to the bitter end, even though, very clearly, when you're part way through it, it appears that you're not actually going to get the value you were expecting out of it.

Dave: 6:04

I think there's a mindset that says, well, instead of doing that, we go to pivot as we go through, and I still find the idea of you know, having an idea of where we want to go and then continually pivoting, that's changing direction as we move and find our way forward and we learn things and we adjust. That's one aspect of it, but it's still actually very similar to that project funding has been approved and therefore we're going to move through until we get a deliverable.

Dave: 6:30

But if you take a funnel mentality and I always think of this like a sales funnel, where we know that we'll we need a whole bunch of people coming in saying they may vaguely be interested in what we're offering. Then there's a bunch of conversations which will we will lose a proportion of those you know vaguely interested people to find the more interested people. Then there's going to be people who might actually enter a buy cycle and then there's the people who will actually give us credit card details. If we're going through some sort of a sales funnel, well, that is implicit in that is not pivoting. But you know, letting go of some perfectly great opportunities, that just the timing is wrong, it's not fitting. So that's a very different thing to pivoting.

Peter: 7:18

Well, those are your definitions already, those different gates as it comes into that next stage is is the timing right for you to do this? Do you have the funds to pay for it right now? And if you don't, then it goes back into the ideas and I'll say, okay, well, maybe we'll cycle back on this, we'll put that idea to one side for now and we'll take another look at it later, when we have either more information or some of those things have been fully defined.

Dave: 7:47

So now we're in a situation, instead of funded work being tracked all the way through and as we learn things from each different piece of work, what does that change in our ability to get something out of the door? And instead we're starting with many more ideas that are having a little bit of work done on them to get them to a point where we begin letting go of the ideas that aren't fit for purpose, that aren't getting to the next stage. Now, that could be. We don't have all of the ideas that aren't fit for purpose, that aren't getting to the next stage. Now, that could be. We don't have all of the bits and pieces, the timing is wrong, we don't have that full kit in place, so we can't move it to the next level. Or it could be that even as we get to this decision point, we realise that it's just not moving forward. It's not what we need, it doesn't align with where we're trying to get to, or we're not getting the sort of sufficiently positive feedback that we would continue with this idea.

Peter: 8:40

Yeah. So I think, all of these things together and hopefully for our listeners, we're painting a picture of how this sort of system works as you come and take. You need an intake to be able to bring in the ideas. You need to be able to say what are the things that I need to care about at this gate? And so this is if we think of that first piece, I've got this initial concept of an idea.

Peter: 9:03

I need a way of saying well, how big is this? What makes it up? What's the definition of it? Is it well-described? Do I have more than one sentence on a page? And then from there, I can start to say, okay. Well, the next part of this might be. Well, okay, now that I've agreed that this is something that sounds like it might be valuable, now I need to start to think about what other criteria can I bring into this? Should I figure out? What is it going to impact? How am I going to measure that progress? How am I going to know that it is going in the direction I expect it to? What is that? What commitments am I going to need in order to move this thing forward? And that then gives me a better defined piece of work that I could potentially start to look at prioritizing into backlogs and think about and break and then have the teams break down further.

Dave: 9:56

I always kind of start bumping into the concept of efficiency around here because I think when we talk about efficiency we get really caught up with the left to right efficiency, the efficiency of a process from going from idea, concept to cash and sort of agile software delivery terms of coming up with an idea and getting that idea flowing all the way through so it's in the hands of our end users so we can get feedback. So there's the concept there of an efficiency that we can get. We want to make that as quick as possible to get feedback. But there's another element of efficiency which is how efficient is our idea generation, in the sense of the volume of ideas that we turn into something tangible that actually generates value for our customers and our organization.

Dave: 10:42

And this level of efficiency is a little bit different because you don't actually want to say if we come up with 10 ideas, we're hyper efficient if all of those 10 ideas deliver. Because, in actual fact, if we come up with 10 ideas, we may well want to see six of those ideas founder, but four of them find a new home, depending on what sort of field we're working in.

Peter: 11:06

Yeah, as you were describing it, the concept of what am I saying no to? And am I saying no to enough things that my funnel is working? If I'm saying yes to everything, then I'm not being very efficient at eliminating ideas and focusing on the right thing.

Dave: 11:25

Well, I'd argue, actually you're not being very innovative and there's a lot of room for excitement that you could generate in your organization because you could be exploring these edge cases where the real benefits you know this huge next win could come from. But if everything you deliver is like flatlining or like is always going through, it just suggests that we're being pretty conservative.

Peter: 11:48

Yeah, it's because we've already picked our ideas. We already know what we're going to do. We've already laid all of it out. I know what the next 12 months look like for every team Safe bets and probably the market we're in right now.

Dave: 12:00

We shouldn't be just relying on safe bets, because even a safe bet isn't safe Topic for another conversation, I think.

Peter: 12:08

Yes, yes, there's a few conversations around that, so what other aspects of this might you want to bring to the table?

Dave: 12:16

I feel like we've covered actually quite a bit there, so you've got something else you wanted to add in. Otherwise, I was going to suggest we look at the three points to wrap things up.

Peter: 12:25

I think the other dimensions of efficiency is a good one. I think the saying no to things as a mark of efficiency is showing focus in the system. Are we actually looking at and considering the opportunities that come through, or are we just letting everything in the opportunities that come through, or are we just letting everything in? Another key part of it is ensuring that we're looking at work in such a way that it's broken down into clearly value delivering components. So we've got deliverables that we can show as increments that are going to deliver a piece of value, and that we're having the conversation at the end of that to say, okay, where do we go now? And that we've got a system in place that's working to do that. And that's where these definitions are ready to come in, and thinking about what that looks like. What would you add to those two?

Dave: 13:14

I think the one kind of brief part of the conversation that really stood out for me was the realization that pivoting is not the same as abandoning great ideas whose time is not quite met. And I think that element of a funnel which gets narrower and narrower as we aim towards the things which are actually going to work really well is a really powerful one and is just not commonly considered as the right way. We have a tendency of wanting to hold on to the bitter end an idea that has the go-ahead of whatever it might be, whatever cohort is approving an idea I mean, yeah, this is the uh, the stage gate problem.

Peter: 13:57

Even though we set up these rules and we put them into place and then one agree with them all the data shows that we should now stop, and we still continue.

Dave: 14:06

Emotional kind of connection to those things. Right, yes, brilliant.

Peter: 14:10

Awesome. Well, I hope everybody enjoyed that and I look forward to the next conversation. Thanks again, Peter, Until next time. Thanks, You've been listening to Definitely Maybe Agile the podcast where your hosts, Peter Maddison and David Sharrock, focus on the art and science of digital agile and DevOps at scale.