RE: Practice: Quarterly Cycle

> The separation of "themes" from "stories" is intended to 
> address the tendency of the team to get focused and excited 
> about the details of what they are doing without reflecting 
> on how this week's stories fit into the bigger picture. 
> Themes also fit well into larger-scale planning such as 
> drawing marketing roadmaps.

Along those same lines ... I find that when my users (goal donors) and 
customers (gold owners) are different groups of people, the use of themes helps 
those stay in alignment as well. My users tend to be more interested in 
nitty-gritty details of the product and of each story. Whereas my "customers" 
want less detail (and yet more visibility/transparency).

Getting both customers and end-users to agree on priorities can be difficult 
when the former is concerned only with coarse-grained higher-level things and 
the latter is more concerned with each story and its details. (not to mention 
that in such cases, "customers" may be less inclined to interact daily, perhaps 
preferring weekly or even once or twice a month).

I find that in such situations, getting my "customers" to prioritize the 
"themes" while having my "users" prioritize the stories within each theme helps 
ensure Im meeting the needs of both groups at the right levels of scale.


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