Going Agile: Don’t Forget About The Future!
July 26, 2011 2 Comments
When working with Agile, make sure to define your long term strategy that gives direction to your product backlog.
The Ubuntu Certification programme follows the beat of the 6 monthly release cadence. In the certification team we run a two week iteration cadence. It is a continuous delivery machine! The danger is for your ambitions to get stuck in the quick rhythm.
Regardless if I am working with a product or a service team, I found it important to set a clear vision to aim for. The constant cadence of Agile is normally riddle with changes in priorities. While this enables the team to remain flexible, I have found that can be confusing for the individual: “Tell me again why are we doing this?”
Having a clear vision or product road map doesn’t only benefit your team, but also your stakeholders. I often find that a lack of a shared vision creates a mistrust – “This iteration could be the last one. Quick, I better ask for everything I need at once! Everything is high priority!”, sounds familiar?
Sharing a common set of principles and aspiration to deliver great value is sometimes confused with the need to have a committed two-year plan. To remain competitive, I rather stop second guessing the future and build working practices that allow for change and make people comfortable working with the unknown.
Great point! A crisp, clear vision is critically important. It surprises me how often this is missed. Teams lose sight of the important goals — the very reason the project was initiated. When that happens, they wonder. Not good. Every project needs a clear vision / roadmap.
In true agile fashion, I wrote my teams vision to fit in 1 page