It’s not about achieving Agile for Agile’s sake. It’s about achieving better business outcomes.
—Mario Moreira
I’m Agile, you’re Agile, everyone is Agile. Or folks think they are. But are they really? If Agile is implementing a mechanical process to you, then it’s not Agile. If Agile is pretending certainty without continuous feedback from customers, then it’s not Agile. If Agile is commanded from above with no ownership from teams, then it’s not Agile. Unfortunately, what is known as Agile in some places is certainly something, just not Agile.
Agile Pit Stop
Moving to Agile is not about reaching an Agile destination. Instead, it is an enabler in achieving better business results.
Moving to Agile is not about achieving an Agile milestone. It is not a destination, but an enabler in achieving better business outcomes. As part of the CVD framework, the Agile culture and practices provide an adaptive mindset to discover and deliver customer value in an incremental manner. From my journey through the professional world of Agile, I have discovered three primary success factors in achieving the chemistry for positive business outcomes, as shown in Figure 3-1.
Figure 3-1. Agile plus engaged customers and employees equals better business outcomes
The first factor is applying an Agile mindset based on the Agile values and principles (both end-to-end and top-to-bottom) focused on customer value with practices that are best suited for your context and environment. The second factor is the importance of engaging customers to learn what they consider valuable. The third factor is the importance of engaging employees who create that value. I call this building an Agile customer-value-driven culture with a spot of being Agile, a dash of employee engagement, and a pinch of customer feedback—a combination that serves as the chemistry for better business outcomes.
Embracing the Agile Values and Principles
What is Agile? Most people think it is a process, a set of practices, and even tools. But it is none of those things. Agile is nothing more and nothing less than a set of values and principles. As it relates to success, Agile is the enabler that harnesses the power of employees and feedback from customers for successful deliveries in a frequent manner.
I purposefully include Agile values and principles in this chapter as a reminder and refresher. It is important to read and internalize the Manifesto for Agile Software Development if you are serious about understanding an Agile state of mind and truly want to “be Agile.”
The key change within the manifesto I would encourage, both in the values and principles, is to replace the word “software” with “product” or “services,” depending on your context. The reason is that the iterative and incremental nature of Agile can work well beyond software and into any creative and knowledge work, whether it be products, services, or other types of work.
As a reminder, here is the Agile manifesto1: It is comprised of just 73 words and was signed by 17 authors in 2001.
Manifesto for Agile Software Development
“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”
The last phrase helps you understand the authors’ intentions. They are not saying there is no value in the items on the right, but instead that there is more value with the items on the left. It is importance to strike the right balance. As you evolve toward Agile, you will find that you will lean more toward the items on the left.
Principles behind the Agile Manifesto
We follow these principles 2 :
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Enabling Agile with Processes and Practices
The goal of an Agile process, method, practice, and technique is an attempt to absorb the Agile values and principles and put them into practice. As part of the spot of being Agile, an enterprise needs to embrace the Agile values and principles and apply Agile processes, practices, and techniques that support the Agile values and principles that enable it to deliver customer value in a incremental manner.
The Agile processes and methods include Scrum, eXtreme Programming (XP), Dynamic-System-Delivery Methodology (DSDM), Feature-Driven Development (FDD), Test-Driven Development (TDD), Lean Software Development, Kanban, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), Lean Startup, and Value Flow Quality (VFQ). This book also introduces you to the customer-value-driven (CVD) framework that applies a discovery and incremental approach that focuses on engaging customers in each aspect of the product journey from identification and recording the idea, revealing it for priority, refining it, realizing it, releasing it, and reflecting on its value for the customer.
In addition, a further array of innovative Agile practices can be applied in various parts of your Agile galaxy in an attempt to ensure Agile is occurring at all levels of an enterprise. This expands the groundwork done by a number of Agile innovators that established many of the current Agile processes and practices. By highlighting the many processes, frameworks, and practices does not imply that any one is better than another or others not discussed here. There is no one correct process or methodology. What you will find is that what suits your working environment and your type of work is the best for your company. My goal is to harness you with a collection of Agile concepts, mindset, processes, practices, and techniques to enable you to more effectively help your enterprise discover and deliver customer value.
Engaging Your Customers and Employees
Success factors in creating a thriving business is the level of engagement from the people within and around your enterprise. In other words, do you have a culture where customers and employees are engaged? I’m not talking about the lip service that is prevalent today. In some cases, you see quite the opposite, where employees are disenfranchised and customers are rarely engaged. Instead, the goal is to have a culture and practices in place that truly gain the benefits of engaging with customers and employees. By applying a dash of employee engagement and a pinch of customer feedback, a company draws its power from an Agile culture and, I contend, becomes a thriving company.
In creating that engine of customer value introduced in Chapter 2, employees are the mechanics of the engine and customers are the drivers. If there is little customer and employee engagement, the enterprise is going nowhere or it is going in the wrong direction. The more engagement at both levels, the more positive the progress.
Agile Pit Stop
Engaged customers are the drivers and empowered employees are the mechanics of the engine of customer value.
When you have a riveting focus on the customer, you have the basis for a relationship where you can truly understand what the customer wants. When you have a sharp focus on employees and provide them the ownership to make decisions and own their work, you will begin to understand the value an engaged employee base can provide. I will cover ways to engage customers and employees in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7.
Focusing on Outcomes
Becoming Agile should not be an end goal. Becoming Agile should be a means to an end. The end goal is the desired outcome of achieving better business results. The Agile mindset and practices, therefore, should be an enabler for better business results. This end goal is often lost in the enthusiasm of becoming Agile. An outcome is defined as the result of a particular action or, in Agile’s case, an Agile transformation. Since moving to Agile requires a change in skills, process, and culture, it involves effort. The whole point of the effort is to achieve better outcomes for the company.
Agile Pit Stop
If the focus is delivering something the customer wants, you must move from primarily measuring outputs to primarily measuring outcomes.
To achieve better business outcomes, you must deliver products that customers like. An output is the delivery of a release or the number of releases. An outcome is how many customers either bought or used the product. Often people focus on outputs because they tend to be easier to measure or are a carryover from a more traditional mindset.
The danger of focusing on outputs is that you may have a high number of outputs with a low number of outcomes. Outcomes are what drives business success. As illustrated in Figure 3-2, it appears that the output of the fourth quarter is the best. However, if you look at the outcomes chart, the third quarter is the best quarter with revenues of $80,000 instead of only $20,000 in the fourth quarter. While the output of four releases sounds good, $20,000 is not favorable to good business results. Outcomes ask you to measure different things, with a particular focus on customer value.
Figure 3-2. Output vs. outcome measures
Becoming outcome-focused has several business advantages. Outcomes focus on the impact of your work (for example, the number of customers and the number of sales). Just because you delivered a release (in other words, output) doesn’t mean you had a positive impact to your sales numbers. An outcome focus also changes your perspective from an internal one to a customer or external perspective. This enables you to better understand what you are aiming for in the CVD world that you need to establish. For a deeper discussion on using outcome measures to help run your enterprise, consider visiting Chapter 20.
Do You Have the Recipe for Success?
Moving to Agile is not about achieving an Agile milestone. Instead, Agile and the CVD framework is about achieving better business outcomes. A move to Agile is a move to a culture focused on customers and what they identify as valuable as well as on engaged employees who create that value. It is a shift in mindset.
Then you add the enabler of Agile and the continuous and adaptive nature it brings. This can lead to better outcomes such as an increase in customer satisfaction and customer revenue. This can be the differentiator between the success of your organization compared to the success of other organizations. Do you have the recipe for success? This recipe consists of a spot of being Agile (culture), a dash of employee engagement, and a pinch of customer engagement for a taste of better business outcomes. The areas of Agile culture, employee engagement, and customer engagement will be expanded further in subsequent chapters.
For additional material, I suggest the following:
Manifesto for Agile Software Development, www.agilemanifesto.org/