Scrum, but Don’t Let Customer Feedback Hold You Back!
If only stakeholders and customers knew what they really need or even want…the good old waterfall model would work just fine….
Ask this question, “Why do you use Scrum?”, and a likely answer among many would be, “to get early feedback from customers and stakeholders”. Yes, it is a great idea to get early feedback from people that matter, no question.
Don’t get me wrong, getting regular feedback is a great way for teams to know they are on the right track and are creating value for their customer. However, customers don’t always know what they need or want or they are not capable of explaining it well enough — which justifies the need for regular feedback.
Many times, when customers see a working solution, their understanding of their own needs change. Hence regular feedback ensures that teams can respond to changing requirements instead of proceeding ahead on the original path.
However, many successful products and services have been developed with little or no customer feedback. Wonder how they would have ever turned out WITH customer feedback!
Let’s take the example of the humble razor. In 1904, Mr. King Gillette patented and produced the first razor that had a replaceable blade. Gillette’s invention enabled men to shave in the comfort of their own homes, for the first time ever. Now, who would have given such a requirement (being able to shave at home) or feedback to King Gillette to motivate him to try for three long years before he successfully developed the first replaceable razor blade?
“We will stop making razors when we can’t keep making them better” — King C. Gillette
In the first year, Gillette sold a grand total of 51 razors and 168 blades. Clearly, his invention must have looked like a dud at that time. If King had taken that customer feedback and given up, going to a barbershop might have been the only way for us to get a nice clean shave even today! However, three short years later, the word about Gillette’s replaceable blades had spread, and 300,000 razors and twice as many blades had been sold. Gillette, living up to his name, became the king of the razor industry!
And herein lies the challenge for Product Owners. No one — not even customers know what they really want. Product Owners must take all the feedback they can get, but at the same time, trust their own instincts.
And even when the customer feedback is good and relevant, it is likely that the feedback will have only an incremental improvement in the product or service. It may not result in a groundbreaking innovation. Product Owners, don’t limit yourselves to just mindlessly implementing customer/stakeholder feedback.
Does customer feedback lead to major innovations? Let’s look at a few products and services from recent times that most likely didn’t come from customer/stakeholder feedback. Big innovations came from people who were passionate and believed in their products and services.
- iPhone
- Netflix
- AWS
The iPhone hit the US market in June 2007 at a whopping price of $499 and $599. Even at that high price, it was not an “unlocked” device. One had to commit to a two-year contract with a mobile carrier. This was an era ruled by the Blackberry and phones were heavily subsidized by the carriers. Getting a free phone with a two-year contract with AT&T was the norm. In those days, users loved the physical QWERTY keyboard offered by Blackberry. It was a great upgrade for corporate users who wanted to write emails on the phone. I really doubt customers would have been rooting for a virtual keyboard that the iPhone offered. I certainly wasn’t!
“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance,” said Ballmer. (Here’s the interview)
The same is true of Netflix and AWS. Neither of them was founded because there was a demand for that service. When Amazon started offering hosting services, it was because they had excess computing capacity.
If Netflix (1997) looks too old, how about Uber (2009)? Was Uber created based on feedback?
Big innovations don’t come from incremental improvements. Product Owners risk missing out on generating huge value from big innovations if their sole focus is on incremental improvements based on customer/stakeholder feedback. Yes, feedback is critical and has an important place in the life of a product or a service, and Product Owners must not ignore feedback for sure. The Product Owner must explore all avenues of maximizing the value, and having a long term vision is one of them.
The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product — Scrum Guide
Scrum may not be the best framework when a team is working on an innovative solution, primarily because of the large number of unknowns. It would be very difficult to estimate how much work can be done in a sprint. Also, the learnings from experimentation may cause the team to change directions rather quickly. At the same time, once the initial challenges are sorted, and there is a reasonable plan for the solution, Scrum would fit right in.
“We will stop making razors when we can’t keep making them better” — King C. Gillette
