“I don’t know what I want but I know how to get it”
- Sex Pistols
Jeff Patton uses this quote to describe a common occurance in agile teams - teams focus on defining what they want to build and then creating it incrementally using agile methods. The weakness of this approach is the inherent inability of such teams to cope with inevitable change or new knowledge. During the interview Jeff offers three strategies for product owners that can help agile teams focus on creating the right software, in addition to creating software in the right way…
Strategy 1: Focus on goals or outcomes rather than software solutions. For example, instead of saying “we want to create these features by this time,” focus on a single goal “we want to increase our market share by diversifying our product offering.” Agile is not about defining what you want to build and building it a chunk at a time. Instead, it is about being clear about the outcome you want to achieve, and constantly adjusting your actions to best reach that outcome given the current circumstances.
Strategy 2: Delay decisions as long as possible. Defer decisions about what to do and exactly how to build it to the last minute possible. Define the specific solution late, when you know more about the problem, constraints and economics. The result will be the most suitable and economically advantageous solution.
Strategy 3: Build up quality. Focus on creating the simplest thing possible. Build up necessities first, then add sophistication later. This may mean that a feature is is not complete the first time around. Early development efforts may build an example of a solution that simply allows you to discover if this feature will help you solve your business problem.
The consequence of following these strategies is that you must give up the myth of being able to accurately estimate or predict what you want, what you will do, and when you will do it by. Looking critically at these strategies, they are all pretty difficult to do in most organizational environments. But hey, who ever said that software development was easy :-).
Jeff also has some interesting insight into user experience, the role of user experience in agile development (part of the product owner team), and the skills needed to fill the user experience role.
Watch it!
