In Agile world today, organizations are solving problems by building Epics/Features in iterative fashion. The release frequency may vary from every day to every quarter depending on the organization’s size & business demand. There are few business or product management artifacts which are referred pre(to show need of the feature) or post(to know the revenue of the product) epic execution. What if there’s a way to gain more information on feature’s acceptance by the market or target customers in an iterative fashion while the Epic is being developed. Every organization has processes in place to collect very rich data by having customer demos & calls, beta testing or various other avenues. However this valuable information may not be available under one umbrella.

Hence, this experimental model that can help every Epic(scrum teams, leadership & other stakeholders) to understand progress of the Epic/feature from business side while it is being developed. Also, decisions, like if the version v1 of an Epic is released then is it worth investing in v2 . Let’s call it Iterative Customer Engagement & Adoption Metrics.

The metric is updated regularly (quarterly or monthly) while the Epic is being baked & could be reviewed by the stakeholders anytime. This will provide a live Epic health that gives confidence and motivation to the development teams as well as to the leadership to make strategic decisions.

Iterative Customer Engagement & Adoption Metrics consists of following parameters. The parameters may vary based on your release frequency.

• AWARENESS: How many new customers have been informed and are aware about the upcoming Epic.
• INTEREST:How many new customers have shown interest to upgrade/buy the product just to use your feature ?
  .
• PRESENCE:How many customers have attended at least one of your demos?
  demos in last quarter.
• CONTRIBUTE: How many new requirements have been added or updated in the Epic based on customer feedback.
• BETA: How many customers contributed in BETA testing specifically for your Epic.
• ADOPTION: How many new/existing licenses acquired | Expected v/s realized growth | How many customer escalations have been raised specifically to your Epic

We will discuss the benefits of this model in more detail during the talk. This will help the entire agile community as well as business community to be more efficient in making decisions.

In most of the places people despise Agile. People think it is some sort of management initiative where the only thing that happens is overloading people with work, changing directions at will and micromanaging. Most of the knowledge workers hate this process and close their eyes to what the philosophy really means. This problem aggravates when these are people in influential roles and decision makers. As Agile Practitioners we have to work out solutions to face this challenge by showing the benefits and advantages that this philosophy and framework bring to the organization.

This session explores how to talk about benefits of Agile without using the Agile vocabulary so that these detractors get converted to followers.

What & Why:

Core4 Team helps in having right governance for Agile teams. A concept of “Core 4” team is a way of improving predictability and managing dependencies and risks of critical programs. This typically evolves when the key stakeholders are working in tandem, building informal relations, trusting and backing each other. The reason of documenting this is to share how this model works so that teams/programs can evaluate if something like this can help their program become more predictable.

How:

Core4 embodies a team of a PO, an SM, a Dev Manager and an Architect. These 4 roles represent the different functions primarily involved in delivering a feature. If we have a group with representation from these functions that acts as a bridge between these functions – communications, decisions, risk mitigations can happen faster. There will be lesser conflicts and more empowered and engaged teams. The most important value that needs to be shared across the Core4 stakeholders is trust. Once trust is established this group can act as a dynamo to move the project ahead.

• With heavy emphasis on financial rewards and punishments and their end-of-year structure, yearly appraisals hold people accountable for past behavior at the expense of improving current performance and grooming talent for the future.
• SMART objectives applied to software development try to force false objectivity onto inherently subjective efforts

Agile Practice focuses on:

• Creating a Collaborative environment
• Focus on group goals than individual goals
• Team intelligence precedes Individual
• Iterative way of building the right product
• Frequent feedback cycles instead of waiting until the end

Can we design our performance management to complement our agile engineering teams?

Why would an organization need an Agile Center of Excellence? How can we create an Agile Center of Excellence? What should be its capabilities? How do we grow and keep this group relevant in an organization?

This presentation talks about a case study of benefits of setting up an Agile Practice Group in a product development company. This session will cover why should we have an Agile Center of Excellence, its operating model, hiring philosophies, value creation, solving systemic problems and changing and changing the culture of an organization by the Agile Practice Group.