How to be an agile consultant

We interview leaders from some of the best teams in the world, so you can learn their secrets and apply them to your team.

This week we’re interviewing Edward Hartwell Goose, a consultant at PA Consulting.

How do you decide and prioritize what you’re going to work on next?

It’s often driven by our clients, we’re rarely the product owners. But we’ll work with them to help them decide – for example if a big piece of work requires some architectural changes we’ll sit with them and prioritise together. Otherwise, I think we just apply common sense to the majority of our prioritisation – what’s going to deliver the most value? What do we need to do for feature X?

How do you decide when something is done, and ready to be shipped?

Mostly based on client sign off. We have our own internal ‘processes’, where code should be documented and tested too, but clients don’t always focus on this. This varies a lot, and it’s something I’d like to see us be better at: defining the definition of done.

What’s your workflow for getting things done?

My approach is to divide up a sensible amount of work and allocate it to individuals in the team [every week]. We ensure that everyone keeps User Stories up to date as they progress. I also spend some time regularly during the week making sure we’re on track.

What do you use to manage your projects?

We use an online tool called Sprintly. I think Sprintly hits the nail on the head. A lot of our projects have us integrating very closely with our clients. Getting clients involved with the project in Sprintly helps them understand what’s going on and where they can help or where we might be struggling. It’s not always easy to persuade them along, but some of our clients have felt they had a much better understanding of what we’re doing because they can see it through Sprintly or the email notification updates. Because it’s a tool for everyone, I think it also trims away a lot of the cruft you get in more traditional tools. It allows you to focus on the task at hand rather than trying to assign the right metadata.

How do you involve your team in the development process?

Everyone gets access to Sprintly, no questions – there’s no point hiding the information that everyone needs. And we do daily stand-ups to make sure everyone is on the same page. With clients (product owners) we don’t tend to get them involved in daily stand-ups, but where necessary we’ll have calls, schedule demos and discussions to make sure they know what’s going on. The email notifications in Sprintly have been helpful for that too – everyone gets a notification when something changes that they’re following. We encourage clients to ‘Follow’ the things they’re interested in. And if none of that works, I just assign tasks to people and complain when they don’t complete or progress them [laughter].

Everyone gets access, no questions. There’s no point hiding the information that everyone needs.

What are some obstacles you’ve had to overcome?

Getting clients to contribute to what they traditionally think is a developer tool is always a bit tricky. Especially when you’re working with clients who are used to waterfall development methods. It’s best to just take things slowly and lead them into it, and always offer to help. We eventually get there, but it can be challenging sometimes. I think some of the training and FAQ guides have been helpful, and sitting down with a client and pointing them through it always helps as well.

How do you keep your team motivated to do great work?

Cake. ;)