limitations of agile

Agile processes, such as Scrum, assume a regular cycle of feature delivery. However, this fails to account for the turbulent nature of the modern digital marketplace. Businesses need to focus as much technical effort on learning post delivery. They also want to do this continuously. Not periodically according to a release cycle.

automatic updates & insights

Many companies automatically update products and services with incremental improvements, sometimes several times a day. Those that do it best, base improvements on customer analysis and feedback. They invest heavily in technology to collect, analyse and report on uptake and user behaviour. As well as in capability to run customer experiments. Continuous delivery of functionality customers want, needs this constant feedback and insight.

kanban

Kanban is used to improve an existing process, such as Scrum. It results in a continuous, balanced flow of work. To achieve this, the team removes wasteful activity and adds tasks that improve the flow.

validated learning

Validated learning does both. It shows the tech team what customers feel about their work. So they can focus efforts on the most important features and waste less time on others. As well develop better technology to understand the customer. Which in turn, leads to deeper insights to base further innovations on.

customer-focus

The diagram above shows a balanced workload added to the tech team's kanban board. It includes work to create products or services. From initial experiments, through to features. It also shows the additional work to support feedback, validated learning and the analysis that leads to insight. This extends the tech team's role into customer development; instead of just constant product development.

lean innovation

Markets are increasingly uncertain and prone to regular disruptions. It is essential to know your customer segment and react quickly to their needs. This is the essence of lean innovation. A process that uses validated learning to drive innovation. Where the teams that create innovative products and services are involved end-to-end.

true agility

Companies where tech teams are seen as unconnected or hard to utilise, are ill equipped for the digital marketplace. In our workshops, tech teams learn how to work with the rest of the business to deliver innovation. The company as a whole then becomes agile. This is a key principle of the agile manifesto, absent from product-focused processes, such as Scrum: "Business people and developers must work together daily".