Are you delivering value continuously? Here’s a great agile way to manage this!
The secret sauce to success
The secret sauce to success
Ever-improving technology allows us to deliver software extremely fast. These days, it is common to release multiple times per day. This has awesome benefits as it enables fast feedback for continuous learning. However, without a structure in place, you may get lost in the woods. Before you know it you may face one or more of the following issues:
You are cranking out features at random. With that, you may not deliver coherent pieces of functionality.
Every team member works on their piece of the puzzle. With this, you risk losing sight of the overall picture.
You can’t identify which user feedback applies to what piece of functionality. This shows that you have a broken feedback loop.
Many consider Scrum to be unfit for CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) practices. They desperately are looking for alternatives. This is why I present you with an awesome approach to create high-value products.
A Product Vision
Everything starts with an idea of what you wish to achieve: a product vision. This product vision should be inspirational. On top of it, it should give direction. You should be able to determine an approach to create a product that will achieve this vision. Without a vision, teams don’t know why the product exists and will make the wrong choices.
There are many ways to break down the vision into projected features, like a backlog, Product Roadmap, Story Map, Impact Map or Product Charter. Explore these ways and pick what works best for you.
Engage the end-user and other stakeholders
When you deploy frequently, you open the door to fast feedback. With that, you can learn and adjust. Often the most valuable feedback comes from end-users. This is why you need to engage them. On top of that, you need to include any other stakeholder with a vested interest in the product. There are multiple ways to do this. Here are three:
You can build in user activity tracking and feedback options.
You can invite them to your daily alignment meeting to bring feedback.
They can be part of the team. With that, the feedback is always close.
Fast feedback loops are essential to keep up with the delivery frequency. Without them, a team is blind and may not know when they have built something truly valuable. Or if they wasted their time and energy.
Working in short iterations with objectives
I recommend working in short iterations revolving around an objective. The length of an iteration could be anything between a few days and a week. Having said this, there may be good reasons to have iterations up to a month or as short as one day.
A team could decide to work from a backlog top to bottom, regardless of the topic. But this will not be as effective as selecting items that all help to reach the objective. By having one objective you foster focus, commitment and collaboration.
A typical working day
At a typical working day, a team checks in to discuss their progress towards the objective. They will verify the learnings from deployments and stakeholder feedback. Then they assess how it impacts the iteration plan. They may need to adjust the plan to optimise the chances to meet the objective.
Throughout the day, the team collaborates to move closer to the objective. They will build and deploy additional functionality and will align with the end-users and other stakeholders. This can be either in person or via tracking tools and user feedback options.
When a team follows this process, they will stay on top of the game. They continue to work on the items that bring the highest value.
End of the iteration
At the end of the iteration, a team meets with the most important stakeholders. They discuss how they determined their iteration objective, how they faired and if they met their objective. They will add how feedback from end-users impacted their journey. Ideally, they can include a demonstration of the current functionality to enrich the discussion.
During this meeting, the team will also discuss with the stakeholders what would be a good objective for the next iteration. This is why the stakeholders with a distinct voice and with a mandate must attend the meeting.
Then the team has a retrospective to discuss how well the iteration went and if they can improve a thing or two for the next Sprint.
Moving downfield
When you work in a fast-changing environment, you need to keep the eye on the ball constantly. You should also have a clear objective while doing so. By working in iterations, you will be able to move the ball downfield. The aim is to score a goal, meeting your objective.
To achieve this, you need a cross-skilled and empowered team who can make their own solution decisions. On top of that, you need fast access to your end-users and main stakeholders to remain agile.
Regular feedback moments will help you to assess if you made the right decisions and adjust course if needed. If you work like this you are well prepared to bring value in a complex and fast-changing environment.
Endnote
In this article, I describe an Agile way to effectively plan and create value in an environment embracing CI/CD practices. You may wonder why I write this piece as a Serious Scrum article. Or maybe you don’t wonder, because you recognized that I described how Scrum can be used in such an environment.
And this would be the main takeaway:
Scrum is awesome in an environment embracing CI/CD, even if people say it isn’t!