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s a practitioner of mindset over methodology and value over process, the Agile2016 conference was a giant slice of professional heaven!
The conference was put on by Agile Alliance, an organization that promotes the “Big Tent of Agile”–meaning agile as a mindset and approach, not a specific framework or methodology. After listening to several presentations and engaging in many informal conversations one thing stood out: VALUE IS KING!
This theme is very meaningful for all requirements experts (business analysts, requirements analysts, product owners, etc). Value is our mission–it’s what our role is all about!
So, here are 9 value-related themes from the conference. Think about how each theme relates to your current practice and how embracing the theme might alleviate pain points.
- The most critical piece in agile is delivering value to the customer, not building software faster.
- Agile is about customer value (long term view) not shareholder value (short term view)
- Leaders need to change too. They need to shift their management style from top-down to a coaching style.
- Metrics most agile teams capture are about the team’s performance and help teams manage themselves, but these are not meaningful metrics for leaders. Leaders need metrics that focus on value and value trends. For example: Velocity does not tell a leader anything. But, run rate of the team per sprint and value delivered does.
- Scaling agile is about the way the teams are organized (value stream teams) more than practices, frameworks, and culture.
- Splitting features into stories, and splitting stories into meaningful, prioritized increments of value to the customer can fix most fragile patterns that sink agile results.
- Embracing learning and the value of a learning organization is important to innovation.
- Processes, frameworks and tools are dangerous to lead with, they do not provoke the mindset and behavior changes needed for successful agile.
- Business analysis is happening all the time on great agile teams! Successful teams model, dialog, and analyze users, strategy, data, process, value, and risk.
BA-Squared is continuing to deliver, engage and expand into more agile transformation work with companies large and small. We are focused on the transformation, mindset and business value aspects of agile. If you would like to discuss your agile interests and needs, please contact us at info@ba-squared.com.