Doing the work that needs doing
In the first article, Jack identified that the Agile process was being 'over' managed and as a result, too little time was left for actual work to be accomplished. Agile works best when management is kept to a minimum.
In this 2nd article of the series, we're going to focus on how to make sure your Agile process is working on the right tasks. We'll continue from the perspective of Jack who joined our multinational from a recently acquired smaller company where he led Product development. In his new role he's a subject matter expert/consultant.
The Problem:
While Jack's previous recommendations allowed the Product dev team to clear all but two quarters of a five quarter backlog, customers are dissatisfied and are starting to go with other vendors who claim they can better meet their needs. Customer retention is becoming a problem.
(Note: This article focuses on external customers. But Product also works for internal customers. Keep that in the back of your mind as you read through the rest of this article.)
Analysis:
On the one hand, customers are getting their product nine months earlier than they were prior to the last Process intervention. Management expected them to be happier. But their aren't. What happened? As the former head of Product, Jack is asked to look in the current situation and figure out what is going wrong and make recommendations to fix it.
Jack spends about a week interviewing everyone from the current head of product, to the engineers, to the subject matter experts who meet with the clients, to the clients themselves. He also attends the Product planning meetings. What he discovers is a disconnect between the customers want and what Product is prioritizing.
Three years ago, the current head of product led the client services group where she interacted with the top level customer management teams for years. She gained a lot of very useful insight into their operations and needs. In fact, this is why she was chosen to head up Product. She also went out and researched all the latest information on how to manage a Product team. She instituted a prioritization process that included a formula to estimate the relative value of one product over another that factored in cost, risk, revenue potential, and several other factors. On the surface, this seemed ideal. ...it wasn't.
Here's what really happened. The new Product lead stopped listening to her customers when she shifted roles. Her effectiveness as a subject matter expert started to degrade as she spent less time interacting with (and listening to) our customers. In fact, she started 'telling' them what they wanted based upon her experience from three years prior. Three years is a lot of time in the market and her customers had changed direction. Product's agile teams were building products that the clients didn't want. Product thought they were thinking like a customer; but they weren't. And the customers were frankly getting angry.
Secondly, the Product development prioritization formula was a confounding problem in its own right. It attempted to replicate in a reproducible way the intuition that the customer facing subject matter experts used to provide. There is just no way that a formula that can be understood and used by mere humans can adequately handle the complex set of inner dependences such are arise within the queue of Product dev tasks. While it worked in some cases, it failed completely in others and as a result New Product that should have been at the top of the dev queue languished at the bottom and visa versa.
The Fix:
Seeing this, Jack convinced the Product lead to ditch the formula and listen to her client facing subject matter experts. Her job became more difficult in that she couldn't use her formula any more and she had to build consensus among the subject matter experts rather than using the formula to dictate her agenda. She had to abandon the notion that she and she alone understood what needed doing. It was an opportunity for personal growth which she embraced.
Ultimately, her team started hitting the mark from a customer satisfaction perspective much more often. As a side benefit, her customers were delighted with the responsiveness of the company and no longer felt like they were being ignored or that their concerns where being insultingly dismissed. Customer retention significantly improved.
Summary:
- Ditch the fancy prioritization formula or at worse use it as a tie breaker when your subject matter experts can't agree on priorities.
- Product HAS to think like a customer. They do that by 'listening' to the customer today. That's what Customer facing Subject Matter Experts do. So listen to them.
- IF you ignore your Subject Matter Experts who interact with your customer base daily, you WILL FAIL as an organization.
- Really listen to your customers (I know I already said that but it so important, it deserves its own bullet point). Use that information to drive your insights.
Stay tuned for further chapters where Jack explores what can go wrong and how to fix it. Chapter 3- 'The Matrix Reloaded' will discuss communication strategies within a company. I.e. how to make sure its works in a way that enhances everyone's contributions rather than like the Matrix Movies where no one knows what was going on; but 'think' they do.
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Disclaimers:
- These Process Trouble shooting articles are not based upon ANY real world companies. The ARE based upon my real life experiences. I've tried to incorporate situations that parallel what I've seen in the world.
- Most of the people in this article are fictional (my dad really existed and he was named Jack).
- In my opinion as the author, I believe employees have an almost sacred duty to work to improve their corporate homes. This means saying what needs saying and not ignoring problems. Everyone has it within themselves to find their voice and fix problems whilst respecting their employers and colleagues.
Originally published on LinkedIn.
