CSRD? Complex, Simple, Reuse, Dependent?

Naaaannnn.

CSRD? It’s the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.

How to estimate my backlog, the list of things you want to accomplish, your roadmap, is a frequently asked question: what do we base it on? For a long time we’ve questioned the value and the workload. All of this in an estimative way: that is to say, broadly speaking. No precision in estimates: it’s useless, because by definition an estimate is imprecise. Wanting to make them precise means a) wasting time b) generating errors.

A few previous articles on the subject:

And what do we put in “value”?

You know agile is historically: maximize value, minimize effort. Even if today maximizing value has become a mistake in my eyes. And I prefer to talk about optimization or resilience rather than maximization (2022, Maximum tolerable product).

Generally in “value” we put a direct impact on what you’re looking for: “more visitors”, “more purchases”, “more visibility”, “more attachment”, etc. Or we put a notion of learning: “I now know how this population reacts”, “I know how to best use this technical component”, etc. And all of this ultimately often comes down in our interlocutors’ mouths to: how much does it bring in??? We can’t blame them it’s also how the French state consolidates all of an organization’s work: through a financial statement.

And that’s what has just changed.

Financial…social and environmental

Through this European directive, 50,000 European companies are being asked for 2024/2025 (and hopefully all of them afterwards) to no longer consolidate only with a financial lens, but also with a social and environmental lens. I talked about this under the name triple accounting in this article (2022, product of tomorrow).

I have the impression that for now the format is flexible, in any case it’s early enough to allow a formalism to emerge. We could imagine in the social part: extended parental leave (benefit), work on balancing salaries between genders (benefit), an executive board that’s overwhelmingly male (deficit), a very weak sense of belonging to the company (deficit), a preferential rate on the offering for job seekers (benefit), etc. On the environmental part: let’s imagine a bicycle rental policy and bike parking development around offices (benefit), canceling the big annual seminar by plane to Porto for Bédarieux by train (benefit), installing an artificial intelligence as a chat engine but which consumes a lot of data and processors (deficit), etc.

I think it would be healthy to already apply this directive to your weightings and your choices when you build something. What is its social weight? Positive or negative? What is its environmental weight? Positive or negative? And especially not to remain at “will this bring in money”? Because on the one hand, non-compliance with the directive will result in fines and obligations, on the other hand the backlash will naturally come from the social and environmental cost that you will generate.

Don’t take advantage of it to strengthen a bureaucratic machine

The problem with many estimation systems is wanting to be precise, full of rules. It’s useless, worse it generates errors. So adding elements as I recommend is good, but it must remain a simple conversation.

To those who are starting out or who would have started, I’m interested in your examples of highlighting these social and environmental aspects in prioritization, weighting, the strategy of your roadmap.