How do I get customers to work in an agile way?

Today, everything is agile and great. All the problems in projects and software development have vanished into thin air. “Shiny, happy people” as far as the eye can see. Everything is simpler and simply better. Really?

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Every self-respecting software or internet agency today sells itself as agile. And most of them have been claiming for a long time that they work according to agile project methods. In the vast majority of cases, this is simply not true and yet not really a lie.

Agile? We’ve always done it that way

In discussions with many software teams, especially in the area of classic CMS and/or e-commerce services, I have noticed time and again that many smaller providers have not yet fully understood what agile working really means.

Programming without a concept is often seen as fundamentally “agile”. Which, of course, it is not in the slightest. Or there are sufficiently well-known artifacts such as daily and retro, etc. in the processes. However, the meetings involve completely different activities and processes.

I am therefore convinced that such “quasi-agile” projects have exactly the same potential for drama as conventionally organized waterfall projects. And I have already seen a few go wrong.

The customer is the product owner. Point

In my opinion, you can only really benefit from the advantages of agile development if it is implemented consistently. From experience, I can say that an agile project is usually only really successful if the customer provides a capable product owner who accompanies the development in iterations together with the team and can also really make decisions.

To ensure that decisions can also be made on a technical level, in addition to the hierarchy in the company, the product owner must also have the corresponding detailed know-how.

And for larger projects, he (or she) should also be available exclusively for the project. Not an easy combination to find.

You can only benefit from the advantages of agile development if it is implemented consistently. From experience, I can say that an agile project is only successful if the customer provides a capable product owner.

Scrum and agile training

In order to be able to carry out agile projects with new customers, I believe that a comprehensive understanding of the processes is of crucial importance. Very few customers have that.

There is therefore nothing more obvious than to impart precisely this knowledge to the customer. If required, AOE offers a two-day course for new customers to familiarize them with the basics and then the details of the agile development process. Managers who are not involved in the project are also welcome, as they need to be familiar with these processes as decision-makers or decision-influencers.

These courses are usually provided free of charge for the customer. When I told a colleague from a software company about this a few months ago, he said that it was quite blatant that the provider was still incurring costs. The truth is, however, that this money is very well invested. After all, it significantly reduces effort and hassle later on in the project.

We only work agile!

When I recently spoke at a company about the agile company and agile working, it was brought up in the Q&A that they had many customers who were not familiar with the agile process and, in particular, had never done a design thinking process. I think that’s a good point. It is indeed difficult.

In such situations, I think it would be fatal to communicate that you only work in an agile way. That excludes the customer, so to speak.

Leave choice

In my opinion, it is much better to give the customer the choice between traditional and new, agile working methods. In my experience, if you take a little time to explain the advantages and disadvantages, many customers will go for it. And they then do so more consciously, which in turn increases the chances of the project’s success.

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This article originally appeared on the AOE blog.

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