Setting the Scene
Suppose…
- You meet a client with a fantastic idea — THE business — and they want to launch it quickly and with great quality: AN MVP.
- You decide to start IMMEDIATELY.
- You begin by creating THE BEST brand, selling the pitch you like most.
- You design an EXCELLENT user experience and interface without understanding the technical, operational, or business complications.
- You coordinate and implement while assuming answers to many unknowns, without thorough and quality follow-up.
- In the end, the client discovers it’s incredibly difficult to use and far from finished.
Enter the 3 R’s
They decide to Re-define, Re-organize, and Re-implement.
- Explaining the operational problems and issues with the presented design.
- Analyzing the complexity of the various features.
- Aligning business needs and requirements.
- Limiting scope under the understanding of an MVP.
- Asking questions and organizing constant reviews.
All with the joint participation of your team and the client’s.
In short: Teamwork and Effective Communication.
But What’s Wrong with This?
Impositions, assumptions, disconnects, lack of ownership/professionalism, lack of coordination, attention to detail, and participation.
These make an MVP stretch on for months and months, when it could have been built collaboratively and in an organized way, speeding up delivery.
Recommendations
Remember the Agile Manifesto:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
Professionalism (Ownership):
- Internal Product Owners / We are all owners
- Being a PO doesn’t mean you hold the truth; it makes you responsible for understanding the business and aligning the effort
So Where Do Processes, Agile, and Professionalism Stand?
The dumbest thing we can do is fit everything into the same framework.
YES, we must have a defined process. YES, we must have quality standards. YES, we must be strict about following processes.
BUT…
We need to know when to bend and even break the rules.
In the End…
It is not the strongest species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
– Charles Darwin