3. Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation
In every role I`ve played, I try to make my work as visible and accessible as possible so that everyone feels empowered to contribute. In my first week as an organizational development manager, I stood up at our staff meeting and said, “We`re experimenting with the way we do things as a company, we`re going to try some things, we`re going to see what works, and then we`re going to integrate it as a business practice – here`s how you can help me get there.” Since then, with a variety of people from across the company, we have started to change the way our business operates. We have changed the way we conduct meetings and workshops by developing a facilitation library and advocates. We`ve changed our culture to make it more open and spark conversations on important topics – the HR team now regularly shares things like pay gap or turnover analysis with all employees, creating a space for discussion. We`ve started to change the way we give each other feedback and the way we set and share our individual goals. But that doesn`t seem transformative. Because it is the people who are affected by the changes who are the ones who are leading those changes. When it comes to software projects, the customer is usually heavily involved in the development process. Just like Frei`s example from the architectural firm, the efficiency of the development process and the quality of the final product are influenced not only by the development team, but also by the customer. While you want to satisfy your customer, you can`t agree to provide new features that should cost a lot more than your customer originally promised.
In addition, it is still a question of recovering the investments already made in the functions that are now abandoned. In the past, software developers spent centuries creating detailed documentation. That was before they even started writing a single line of code. And while documentation isn`t a bad thing, there comes a time when you should focus on providing your customers with functional software. My role is to serve our entire company: we have 130 employees who form different teams and work towards a variety of goals in different ways, all with different motivations. So I had to do a lot of work to really understand my “clients”. Here are some of the ways I try to do this: Maybe you work in an HR team where your client is your employee. Or maybe you work in finance, where your client could be a combination of employees, suppliers, or the board of directors. Whatever your job, at some point there will be a “client” because if your job didn`t exist.
The same questions I asked as a product manager should always be relevant to you: “What are your customers/employees/colleagues/suppliers trying to accomplish? How could your work help people achieve their goals? What obstacles do they face in achieving their goals? The most effective and productive teams I`ve seen are those that engage that “customer” to answer these questions, and then work with them to develop and iterate on the services they offer. Not only does this involvement improve the likelihood of delivering a product that your customers really love, but it also ensures that your customers and development team are ready to tackle any challenges they face along the way. For example, imagine your team developing a product for a new customer. At the beginning of product development, everyone signs a detailed contract that specifies exactly what features will be delivered and how long and how much it will cost. The contract is clear, precise and everyone leaves the table happy. In this article, you will find a brief summary of the Agile Manifesto. This easy-to-understand guide provides an overview of this approach and reveals its impact on the software development industry. We often think of product development as a two-sided game. In this game, your customers compete with your development team in a battle for supremacy in which there can only be one winner. However, one of the most important themes of the entire agile manifesto is the pursuit of user and customer satisfaction. With this in mind, even product organizations can apply the lessons of this value in their interactions with their own end users and reap the benefits of promoting a more collaborative approach between those who build the software and those who use the software. Part 2: People and interactions on processes and tools.
But it doesn`t have to be that way. The third value of the agile manifesto is customer collaboration through contract negotiation. This value underscores the importance of encouraging your customers and development team to work together to find the best way forward together, rather than seeing each other as adversaries. In reality, there is no employer-employee relationship between me and my clients. The relationship is much more like a teacher-student relationship in which we are constantly changing roles. We both need to teach and we both need to learn. We have to listen and we have to show. “We`re discovering better ways to create software by making it and helping others do it. Thanks to this work, we have gained in value: The Agile Manifesto places sending software to your customers as one of the highest priorities. You can then gather feedback to improve future releases. One of the advantages of something like the Scrum methodology is that a number of contract-related delivery cycles can take place without much delay and renegotiation. With an agreed structure for how we approach the selection and prioritization of work, we can talk more about the content, purpose, and potential barriers.
Short cycles and working arrangements for planning, decision-making, work and review are a prerequisite for “agility”. Contracts and working arrangements that can take advantage of this type of way of working allow less time to be spent and to emphasize the contractual part of the equation, more on value creation. Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-based task and project management tool with powerful collaboration and communication capabilities essential to agile project management. You can perform real-time updates and inform your team of new changes and share your plan with internal and external stakeholders to increase transparency and keep everyone informed. At first, the idea of customer management seemed a little strange to me. I work for the client. The customer is the one who pays me. The client is my employer, not my employee. The Twelve Principles are the guiding principles of the methods contained under the title “The Agile Movement”. They describe a culture where change is welcome and where the customer is at the heart of the work. They also demonstrate the movement`s intent as described by Alistair Cockburn, one of the signatories of the Agile Manifesto, to align development with business requirements. “Individuals and interactions via processes and tools Work software via comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration via contract negotiations Respond to changes according to a plan 1.
Individuals and interactions via processes and tools The first value of the Agile Manifesto is “people and interactions via processes and tools”. Valuing people higher than processes or tools is easy to understand, as these are the people who meet the needs of the business and lead the development process. When the process or tools drive development, the team is less responsive to change and less likely to meet customer requirements. .