Agile Customer Thinking and the Agile Manifesto

Agile responsive teams are only as good as what they are responding to.

The customer is central to the agile team and celebrated in the Agile Manifesto. But how present and leading is the customer in agile day-to-day work?

Agile Customer Thinking wants to help agile teams access the customer in a new approach that is engineered from an agile frame of mind.

Traditional customer insight tools are designed for marketing and branding. They are slow, limited, autocratic and expensive. This has made it hard for agile teams to employ the customer properly into their work — it’s not for the lack of motivation, its for the lack of method.

Agile Customer Thinking is a customer insight approach engineered to fuel agile teams. To do that we have to make sure it supports the values and principles found in the Agile Manifesto.

Below you can find some of the values and principles from the manifesto and how Agile Customer Thinking is tailored to help teams adhere to these:

(Values and principles from the agile manifesto are presented in bold)

VALUES:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Agile Customer Thinking is not a linear, but a a messy process. It’s a way of doing things that in itself is agile. It helps teams identify how they want to support the customer, and suggests a way to break down the customer problem into parts that the team is able to work towards and solve. A messy process does not command obedience, it offers a map of opportunities. So that as individuals and interactions change the messy process is always there to help the teams with what they need — when they need it. The team and the inputs control the messy process — the process does not control the team.

A messy process does not command obedience, it offers a map of opportunities.

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Agile Customer Thinking does not produce endless amounts of content that the team members have to study. It adapts to the teams capabilities, work rhythm and communication. And finds a fit between what the team needs to learn, the limitations and opportunities of the agile process.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Agile Customer Thinking proposes a way to collaborate with the customer continuously, in real-time and at scale. It’s engineered so that the collaboration is not deliberate and conscious on the part of the customer. If they know they are being analyzed and observed their behaviors and priorities change (the Hawthorne effect), which is a grave potential error source. Agile Customer Thinking engages the customer in interactions and from these interactions are able to learn what motivates and drives the customer. The answers are not found by asking questions directly. We engage the customer in specially engineered interactions — and from these learn and deduct the customers motivation.

Responding to change over following a plan

Agile Customer Thinking is a messy process. It is engineered to respond to all potential changes in an agile project. The impulses and inputs enable the different parts of the process in a fluent, agile manner.

PRINCIPLES:

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

Agile Customer Thinking offers a way to understand what the customer finds valuable, in a form and format that is at scale, in real-time and continuous. It offers the team access to why the customer finds it valuable — not only what they ask for or interact with.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

Agile Customer Thinking offers the team continuous insight into the motivation and demands of the customer. As the customer is exposed to new opportunities, new data and insight emerges. Agile Customer Thinking is able to continuously feed this back to the team to make decisions all through the project / all the way down the rabbit hole.

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

The customer perspective has to be a part of the discussion. Customer Agile Thinking puts the customer perspective into the priorities of the business people and the developers (it does not require its own role — everyone is a customer ambassador). To make sure the decisions are not made purely between business and developer priorities but that the customer demands and values are a part of the equation.

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

Agile Customer Thinking builds on The Law of the Customer introduced in Explaining Agile by Steve Denning. Agile Customer Thinking captures customer data and demonstrate to the team members how their contribution creates value and is meaningful to the customer. It gives everyone access to data and demonstrates a direct line of sight from the team members to the customer.

It gives everyone access to data and demonstrates a direct line of sight from the team members to the customer.

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

Agile Customer Thinking produces outcomes that promote discussion and action. This has to work in an immediate dynamic face-to-face environment. Agile Customer Thinking makes sure there is an increase in discussion where the customer is at the center and is prioritized.

Working software is the primary measure of progress. Agile processes promote sustainable development.

Agile Customer Thinking holds agile’s own feet to the fire (re. the first principle) to the extent that customer value creation is as an important measure of progress as is working software. And offers a way to capture and identify customer value with the same ease.

Agile Customer Thinking holds agile’s own feet to the fire

The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Agile Customer Thinking feeds a continuous system of action. It has to be immediate and it has to respond in almost real-time.

Simplicity — the art of maximizing the amount of work not done — is essential.

Agile Customer Thinking gives the team direct access to what is valuable to the customer. And helps the team discuss which actions need to be prioritized and which can be avoided (not-done).

The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

Agile Customer Thinking helps self-organizing teams make their own decisions by setting information free and giving the team the information they need to operate autonomously.

Agile Customer Thinking helps self-organizing teams make their own decisions by setting information free

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Agile Customer Thinking sees effectiveness in direct relation to what is and isn’t creating customer value. And it will assist the team by giving access to customer insight that helps the team prioritize their resource and investments.