Better outcomes from evolving Product, Agile & Culture practices in unison>
Medium – Karl Persson
Changing culture is hard, so it should come as no surprise that a lot of digital transformation efforts focus on the Agile delivery process and often with lackluster results where itâs easy to question Agile itself or the chosen frameworks and methodologies Modern product practice strives to change the approach from output (what and how much you deliver) to outcomes (the value of your efforts), but these often clash with deeply held cultural norms and the emphasis on process Rather than to throw out your Agile framework or try to completely overhaul your Product function, a better way may be to ensure there is balance between Product, Agile and Culture practices It is a reality that many companies are struggling to adapt to a digital-first world where customers easily abandon products that arenât tapping into their needs and employees leave for new opportunities at an every increasing pace. Is Agile really working? Whether you are a large enterprise thatâs doubled down on SAFe or a smaller shop with a couple âtwo pizzaâ Scrum teams, organization are struggling to improve the value they get out of their software product development practice and naturally are questioning whether Agile (and agile) is working, and what to do instead. Stop right there! Product practice and shift to outcomes over output While Agile primarily focused on the process to deliver software in smaller chunks, with retrospection and ever greater velocity, modern product management practice tries to shift the emphasis from output (how much and what you put through the delivery pipeline) to outcomes (why what youâre doing matters to customers and what value it brings to them and the organization). But why are so many still struggling. As a product person, the easy answer is that the Agile delivery mechanism doesnât jibe with our product outcome focus (bad Agile!). As an engineer or delivery person, the answer is âclearlyâ that product folks and business stakeholders havenât sorted out what is needed so that we can just focus on delivering solutions efficiently. As a non-product development person, the answer used to be that Agile would make everything much better because weâd do âstuffâ so much faster. Culture, Vision and Alignment Most of us would agree that having a great company culture is important, but achieving this is hard and takes time. The same goes for product, where immediately shifting from output (things) to outcomes (results) could end up as just a list of delivered things masquerading as outcomes. For Agile delivery, the obvious failure mode is that weâve optimized a really efficient delivery pipeline of âstuffâ that neither aligns to company goals nor meet customer needs. Evolving Product, Agile, and Culture in unison In practice, that means we may have to be OK with imperfection or suboptimal practices as we evolve, in unison. And yes, by that I truly mean SAFe, project-based development, pre-baked solutions, and lack of organization-wide OKRs. Embrace it.
Link: https://kpersson.medium.com/better-outcomes-from-evolving-product-agile-culture-practices-in-unison-c528acf16d0f