Delivering like an Agile Team

Traditionally, there can be a disconnect with a project’s delivering team and the target customers of the project. As projects create many detailed specifications it can be difficult how the customer may see the product. A common reason for this is simply that people don’t always know exactly what they want. Luckily, one thing that makes agile powerful is its ability to change the way the deliverable is seen by the customer.

Ranked in the product backlog, the highest value items can be found. The product owner will typically focus on all of these first instead of general knowledge of the project. On average, 45% of a project’s functionality are never even used by its customers. It’s even possible that only 20% of your end product is being used by 80% of the customer-base. This can explain why the product owner would be focusing so much more on the highest valued items in the product backlog. They will always want to prioritize these items and so should not rank the product backlog.

Therefore when trying to deliver like a proficient agile team, the team should try to start first with the items they are most familiar with. These items will, usually, be the easiest and most efficient to produce. The team may also want to look for whichever items they can complete quickly. Focusing on what can be completed quickly and implementing features you understand well will give the team the ability to deliver before the entire project is finished. This is a huge boon as the owner of the product will not have to wait until full project completion to begin using their product.

Source:

"Agile at Work: Building Your Agile Team." Lynda.com - from LinkedIn, www.lynda.com/Business-Skills-tutorials/Welcome/175073/379413-4.html. Accessed 1 Nov. 2017.

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https://www.invisionapp.com/blog/maintaining-ui-integrity-within-the-agile-framework/