Matthew J. Beyer Who is accountable for maximizing customer value with the development team at your organization? Do you think of multiple people? Do you have trouble answering the question? If this is not clearly defined at your organization, it can cause a lot of confusion and a product’s quality may suffer. The Scrum Framework clearly defines the … Read more Maximize Customer Value with a Product Owner
What is your organization’s highest priority? In the twelve principles of the Agile Manifesto, this ‘highest priority’ is defined with the first principle: “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” Satisfying the customer is the highest priority. In software development, that means delivering valuable software early … Read more Focus on the Highest Priority
In the Scrum Framework, there are built in ceremonies to help the organization and team be agile and learn quickly. These include: daily scrum sprint planning sprint retrospective sprint review Each sprint has a goal and at the end of the sprint cycle, the team reflects on goal completion and what can be done to … Read more Learn Quickly
Are teams and people working in silos in your organization? Is communication difficult across different departments? Cross functional teams (also called feature teams in software development) are a great way to work together more efficiently. In the Scrum Framework, the development team is cross functional. This is defined as, “Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed … Read more Break the Silos with Cross Functional Teams
When was the last time you took time as a team/group to get feedback and discuss ideas around improvement? Through the Scrum framework, I have come to value the retrospective. A retrospective is defined by the Scrum Guide as “an opportunity for the Scrum Team to inspect and create a plan for improvements to be … Read more Getting Feedback through a Retrospective
Are you having trouble with transparency and communication around your work or a team’s work? Would you like to be able to visualize when an item is in progress or done? I recommend using a visual board to show your work. In software development, you may hear the phrases Scrum board or Kanban board. In … Read more A Visual Board for Work
I often have many ideas in different places that pertain to a specific product or project. This makes it hard to see all of your ideas as well as be able to prioritize which ones are the most important. I have found great value in having one backlog to store all of these ideas. I first … Read more One Product, One Backlog
Do you know your customer’s pain points? Do you understand how they currently do their job? Do you know how to make their jobs more efficient through better products and design? Do you have empathy for them? These are all questions that I have asked myself throughout my career. An ideal way to find the … Read more Customer Empathy
Are you having trouble communicating and understanding daily goals as a team? Is there a lack of transparency? Do deadlines keep getting missed? Are there too many meetings being scheduled daily with co-workers? Something I have come to value greatly in any part of the organization is a daily meeting with the below three questions. … Read more Inspect and Adapt Daily
I wanted to share this TED talk of Ray Dalio as I found it very insightful. Idea meritocracy, being radically truthful and transparent, collective decision making, and the dot collector tool present such a unique perspective on how to operate as an organization. What are your thoughts on these concepts? Have you experienced any of … Read more Idea Meritocracy