For the past years, I have struggled with the process which is another topic that PM needs to address all the time. The idea is having a better process can lead to faster delivery. That’s indeed a huge doubt. Below is what I learned-
What is the concept of agile?
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
From the concept, we can see it is dynamic and emphasize the team should work closely with users.
Let’s also zoom in to see some scrum ceremonies which is one of the most popular practices in agile-
Sprint planning- grooming what should tackle in the next sprint
Sprint daily- to sync about if there are any blockers, and update each other
Sprint review- what value we have delivered in this sprint? to gather feedback from stakeholders
Sprint retro- to talk about what worked and what didn’t, why we failed/ succeeded, and keep going
Here we see that the ceremonies reflect the concept of agile- work closely with team and users. But why is it important to work closely with users? and why do people talk about agile so much? Before answering the questions,
The agile process also reminds me of the lean startup model-
Learn- is product discovery to find out what is worth solving, and break them into hypothesis
Build- is when the dev team really kicks in and starts working. but remember it is all about experimenting, 6 months of building is too long. The goal is way shorter so that we can deliver value to our users and the business sooner.
Measure- is to define the outcome and what success metric can tell us if we prove the hypothesis right or wrong
I find these 2 concepts work harmoniously.
Both the lean startup model and agile process are telling us to keep measuring and get the feedback (from inside and outside) sooner and it doesn’t talk about time to deliver.
What the company wants to know from a product team is if the direction is correct. And as a product team, by constantly getting feedback from the business and users, we will know if we are on the right way. Really who wants to see you running fast but the direction is to the edge of the hill?
This is basically what agile is about-
We dare to try and fail because the definition of success is you are smarter than before.