Agile Quickie: Collaboration & Individuals
Today we’ll be learning about the first two Agile Values, Customer collaboration over contract negotiation & Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools. I’m going to do my best to keep this Condensed.
#1) Customer collaboration over contract negotiation:
I’ve intentionally taken this one out of order of how it is displayed within the Agile Manifesto and that is because of the positioning of the first Agile Principle “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.”
The customer is our Why. There is no what, how, when or job without this why. The Agile Mindset places value on working WITH the customer to understand THEIR needs, make sure that what we’re building is what solves their problems and building a strong relationship to be able to provide them the best service or product possible as quickly as we can. When we focus on the Why, the rest will take care of itself. When we lose focus of our Why, and spend more time discussing contracts, or even requirements, we end up providing the customer a contract or a requirements document, rather than a solution to their problem. That wouldn’t work well at Burger King when you’re hungry, why would that work with software?
How do we embody this value?
- Working closely with the client to understand their problems
- Proposing solutions that can be implemented quickly to test our hypothesis of a solution
- If that solution is viable, we then move to improving that solution
- We focus on Top Value, rather than Bottom Line
- We listen to the customer’s feedback to inform our direction, knowing that while they are Mission Control, we are piloting the ship.*
Making it practical:
- When refining tickets, we should always be asking these questions:
- “What problem is this solving or how does this fit into the bigger picture of the problem we are solving?”
- “How could we simplify this and deliver it quicker to get our solution into our customers hands sooner? “
- “How can we simplify our development processes to decrease time to delivery, increase quality and lower cost to the customer?” This could help us convince them we should build more things.
#2 Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools
We work with people that use things. This order is important to keep in mind. The best processes and tools are useless if no one trusts you to use them, if the processes and tools are cumbersome or if those processes and tools are not selected by the team doing the work. As a Scrum Lead, this one is my top value to keep in mind, and to continually improve upon.
How do we embody this value?
- By treating each other with respect
- By communicating often through chat, calls or in comments within tickets
- By recognizing that processes and tools are only effective if they’re used consistently and by shared standards
- We are never too busy to be kind and compassionate
Making it practical:
- Take a moment to ensure you’ve acknowledged the others on the call. Say hello, ask about their day, say “Good Morning” or another appropriate salutation. Awkward silence should not be a cultural norm
- Don’t rely on a ticket or an email to be your sole source of communication
- Processes and tools help support us in our interactions. Make sure you’re using them as agreed upon.
- Look for ways to collaborate as a starting point. Hop on a call to clarify any misunderstandings.
Forbes article: HBR’s Embrace Of Agile (forbes.com)
