Capitalizing on Agile’s Flexibility (Within Reason)
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The Agile process allows us to balance tangible deliverables with other feature requests that evolve naturally. Always keeping in mind the end user is super duper important to our process; but, sometimes a project can slow amid additional design iterations or unanticipated development requests that become priorities.
That’s the beauty of Agile! It understands that a project is living and breathing. The challenge to project managers, however, is to articulate that shifts in the natural ebb and flow of an engagement can (and normally do) affect timelines and budgets. It’s essential that we help capitalize on this flexibility within reason so clients can best walk the line between personal opinions and the almost limitless design and development opportunities for users.
With thorough research and planning, a high degree of transparency in our work and daily communications internally and externally, and a commitment to understanding the history and goal behind each project, we are setting the stage to truly enjoy the final result and this flexible, creative process.
My current employer has made a huge initiative to bring Agile/Scrum into the operations side of our organization. Unlike Viget we’re not providing a service to clients; instead our clients are the other departments within the company. The majority of Agile examples that I’ve seen are primarily structured around internal software development and occasionally consider the front-end and user experience side of the equation.
This being said, I’ve always been curious how Agile works when providing professional services. Do you find that your project managers follow Agile to-a-T when working with clients or is there a need for flexibility with most projects?
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You hit on a real challenge of the agile process - managing expectations.
More than anything else, agile is about communication, collaboration, and the ability to move forward in a low information environment. And the client - whomever they are - needs to be part of it.
Thanks for the comment, Nick. Our PMs follow Agile closely but, with all things, compromise exists.
Internally, Agile helps us to be nimble, focused, and informed. Our breadth spans strategy, design, development, and marketing, so the old way of tasking and building in somewhat black boxes didn’t lend itself to everyone involved understanding the greater goals of a project.
Externally, we’ve been transparent about our process – including its benefits and drawbacks – and had clients participate in scrum to be even more so engaged. Depending on the engagement, many clients receive regular status reports in addition to their communication with PMs. Both means help them to prioritize as the project ebbs and flows.
Our being comfortable saying, “not right now” (or “no”) – either to a client or to the team—and communicating honestly are keys to keeping a project moving forward as priorities shift.
Agile development and it’s subsequent tools are real life savers. Striking a happy medium between giving the client exactly what they want and staying within budget/timeline constraints is hard…
We’re an offshore development firm and tackle that problem by not doing design work. Hey, we know what we’re good at and what we aren’t good at and aren’t ashamed to admit it.
Raza Imam
http://SoftwareSweatshop.com
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