Steve Neiderhauser

Agile and Customer Experiences

Agile is a software development approach that is now widely embraced.  This approach creates a customer touchpoint every two or four weeks when a development sprint is completed. At the end of a sprint the team demos the completed software to the customer.

During this product review the team has an opportunity to design an experience the customer will remember.  I have identified two ways the team can enhance the demo experience.  I'm sure you can think of others.

Grab a copy of Great Demo! by Peter Cohan and apply some of the concepts.  Starting from end is one of many useful tips.

Ask for feedback from your customer.  Ask your customer what they liked about the software.  What can we improve on?  Also follow the 10 rules of feedback for customer evangelists.

Managers as Obstacles

A good manager will eliminate roadblocks so his team can move at high speeds.  Marty Cagan's radar detects another group of managers.  Plodding process police who enforce the official processes to the point the process itself becomes an obstacle.

The best managers sense when a process is an impediment and respond accordingly.

Marty refers to a Scrum coach who makes this observation.

“Where I see the Scrum Master go horribly wrong is when they take the ‘protect the team’ posture and try to keep the product owner away from the team during the sprint.  We need effective communication between product owner and team - not no communication."

The above quote kills me because Scrum teaches that the product owner should collaborate with the team, and yet someone took a simple process and misapplied it.  Some managers have a "design mind" and understand how to build software while others build roadblocks.