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Hi,
I had an interesting question posed on a forum I regularly monitor and respond; I thought it would be interesting to share the response here for the readers who sometimes do not see that I also write in other areas (smile). The entire thread can be found here.
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The thread began along the lines of, “How do you measure success from the Customer point of view.”
The first answer I gave did not go over well…
“How about asking the customer?”
A lot of people jumped in on this one. Many people came up with similar answers.
Then, I answered one of the replies along the lines of:
“>>I have a strong desire to make sure that whatever project I work on the customer defines success.
This is an interesting thought. Can you explain that with an example? Have you tried it before?”
This was my reply:
Hi,
Every once in a while I will throw out a statement like that just to see if people are reading my replies (smile).
Let me address your second question first, “Have you tried it before?”
Yes. I have. In fact, after doing this for a while now I will not go into a team or organization without that being defined up front and in clear English (or whatever the local language — as long as I understand it AND the customer understands it!). When I first started doing software development (even before “agile and Scrum”), I tended to not ask this question and just make a lot of assumptions about what the customer wanted. This usually got both me and the customer (if there was indeed a customer) feeling frustrated.
Example(s).
I have many, so here are a few that stick out in my mind (especially at close to three AM and I am up with insomnia)…
Example #1
—————-The first one I just talked about on Friday with a colleague of mine where we worked on a project that is still talked about today as one of the “best” agile projects people have worked on at their organization. One of the reasons it was a success — from both the minds of the customer and the development team (which includes all the roles) was that we had an engaged Product Owner and we took the time at the beginning of each Sprint to define what “done” looked like for that individual Sprint.
Were we expected to deliver something into production each iteration (or Sprint)? No. Actually, our “first” definition of done could be considered pretty week from people “outside” the team; it was something like, “We will deliver a piece of working code.”
We did this the first Sprint. And wow. The customer was blown away. The development team got focused on delivering working software (instead of traditional waterfall artifacts — some of which have nothing to do with working code).
Did the definition of “done” evolve? Yes.
Example #2
—————–I was asked to come into a uuber-architecture project that had been “drifting” for years. One of the reasons this was happening was there was a group (a large technical group, by the way) pushing through this large change throughout the enterprise. It seemed like everyone had a line item in their budgets to “donate” to this project (I am joking about the donation — it was a sunk cost almost every project was paying for). When I cam in, customer satisfaction was low.
I wondered why and started going out and asking the people that were paying for the projects. Ummm… I got some surprising answers. Many of them included, “Um, I am not going to use that thing” to, “Mike, it is something I inherited after the last round of reorganizations.” It was almost silly. It took me a while to find a “real” customer for this project. And oh, I found one, and asked them to be committed to the team. We (the team, the product owner, and me (playing the role of ScrumMaster on this team)) burned through three product owners in multiple iterations (or Sprints) to be able to get to the “right” one.
In the end, I think the project got killed. And, it was a good decision for the organization. Why?
And this is important to realize — if you are using Scrum and cannot identify an engaged Product Owner… do not do Scrum.
There. I said it (and have in the past).
If the customer (or Product Owner) cannot define success for the team (or to themselves)… do something different.
Hope these examples help!
More information about the topics above can be found at:
Transparency
http://www.implementingscrum.com/blog/2006/10/16/transparency-and-jessica-alba-a-scrum-connection/
http://www.implementingscrum.com/cartoons/cartoons_files/2006-11-30-Transparency.html
“Done”
http://www.implementingscrum.com/blog/2006/11/27/done-really/
Product Owner
http://www.implementingscrum.com/blog/2007/06/04/whos-your-product-owner/
http://www.implementingscrum.com/blog/2006/10/30/shock-treatment-for-your-product-owner/
Silver Bullet
http://www.implementingscrum.com/blog/2006/09/25/scrum-the-silver-bullet-not/
Thank you,
- Mike Vizdos
www.implementingscrum.com
www.michaelvizdos.com
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Originally Published:
December 16, 2007
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