How do you stay aligned while agile?

Trusting the team and tracking key results and progress versus tracking what people are working on. Tracking what they are working on ends up being micromanagement. Things can change fast, especially if you're in a startup. 

Stay agile, get disciplined about the key results you feel support the objective, and have your team share their progress on those. Be sure to assign ownership to those objectives. The classic V2MOM that Sales force defined had the O has Obstacles. Our CMO modified that to Ownership. If someone doesn't own a method no one owns it. Ownership drives a culture of results, and motivates the owner. 

This approach allows for agility and alignment because the owners can report on the progress they are making on their initiatives.

I stay aligned with my leadership by building in public. I share our on-going updates on Slack to ensure teams know what's on our plate, along with performance stats and learnigns. I also utilize all hands and MBRs to share what's working, what's not, and plans for executing against goals. Agility comes from staying centered on the north stars. As long as I'm working on the business priorities, I'm able to take on tasks that help us perform against goals (or remove what isn't) to stay focused, aligned, and agile.

It's important to make a plan but plans should change when presented with new information. 

PMMs on my team are aligned to sprint teams within our organization so that we have a small team of PMM, PM, Engineering, Design, and Data. They have their own rituals and practices that allow them to discuss tradeoffs, reprioritize, and plan their roadmaps. How do they stay agile?

• They typically have goals/KPIs that they're aiming to hit together as a team. They look at this data regularly and assess if they need to shift priorities.
• They bring new insights to the table - whether it's customer feedback, Sales challenges, or tech challenges that can also help them change the course of the roadmap. 

Be transparent with your team. I share notes from almost every meeting I'm in throughout the day. I've never gotten feedback about oversharing so my disposition is to take the team along as we make changes. No surprises. My experience is people are always open to roll with changes if they understand when and why they are happening.