In your Business, what are you Optimizing for?

Do you optimize for your customers or for the ease of following a plan or process? Many companies like to say that they optimize for their customers.  However, upon a closer look, you catch the scent that some companies optimize for their own internal processes or plan instead.  When you change the plan, it can disrupt schedules and make it less clear on what will be built for the release, as things tend to evolve.  It will also force re-planning, which can impact dependencies and staffing of the work. One of the Agile values states “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” In other words, Agile advocates the importance of interactions with customer.   

One example of optimizing for a plan or process (instead of the customer) is purposefully avoiding customer feedback because it can force you to adjust the plan which can be messy. Another example that I’ve witnessed several times is when actual customer feedback is captured that indicates a change to customer needs, yet the feedback is ignored since sticking the plan is an easier path.  This is a sign that the organization may be optimizing for their internal processes or the comfort of sticking to the initial plan. When paired with management objectives of sticking to a schedule, this often leads to a mindset of avoiding any change. Does this sound familiar?  Be careful not to fall into this trap.  It can be very easy to do.  It can lead to losing touch with the customer and poor business results.

When you optimize for the customer (external), it will often lead to change.  One of the Agile principles states that you should “Welcome changing requirements”.  The more you interact with your customers (which you should be doing), the more they will provide thoughts or feedback on what they really want. This, in turn, leads to adapting the plan to the great benefit of building something the customer wants.  The net result is an increase in better business results. 

There are several ways to gauge if you are optimizing for the customer or for your internal plan or processes.  A first way is to identify how often you actually engage with customers (and how many) in ceremonies like demos and sprint reviews. Engaging with many customers indicates you are optimizing for the customer while none or few indicates a leaning toward the internal plan.  A second way is to capture how often you actually incorporate customer feedback.  Methodically incorporating feedback indicates that you are optimizing for the customer while incorporating little feedback may indicate a leaning toward following the plan.  As you look around your project, product, or company, ask yourself, who are you optimizing for?  Who should you be optimizing for?       

The Power of Agile is in your Customers and Employees

I’m Agile, you’re Agile, everyone is Agile.  Or folks think they are.  But are they really? If Agile is only a process to you, Agile will fail. If Agile is pretending certainty without validating with customers, then Agile will fail. If Agile is commanded from above with little ownership from the team, Agile will fail.  More importantly, not only Agile will fail, so will your business.  Agile is a move to a lean culture focusing on customers and what they find as value and focusing on employees who are the engine that can create that value.  Agile is effectively about creating a thriving business. 

I believe there are the two primary success factors in creating a thriving business: a culture where customers matter and employees matter. I’m not talking about the lip service that is prevalent today. In some cases, we see quite the opposite, where employees are disenfranchised and customers are rarely engaged. Instead, the goal is to have a culture and practices in place that truly gain the benefits of engaging with customers and employees. Through the customer and employee, a company draws their power within an agile culture and, I contend, within any thriving company.

When you have a riveting focus on the customer and you believe that an engaged customer matters, then you have the basis for a relationship where you can truly understand what the customer wants. When you have a sharp focus on employees and provide them the space to make decisions and own their work, then you will begin to understand the value an engaged employee base can provide.

If the values are sincerely translated to organizational objectives and agile approaches are applied, then it can act as a differentiator between the success of your organization compared to the success of other organizations. Of course, every company likes to say that employees and customers matter, but are their objectives and actions really aligned with these values?

Upon closer inspection, the values should translate into objectives focusing on customer engagement and employee engagement.

• Customer engagement focuses on establishing meaningful and honest customer relationships with the goal of initiating continuous customer feedback to truly identify what is valuable to the customer. This includes establishing all of the activities involved in a Customer Feedback Vision.
• Employee engagement focuses on empowering employees so they can self-organize into teams and can own and be a part of the decision-making process at their own level.  When employees have ownership, they have more passion in their work.  When they have more passion, they give 110%. 

Then we add the “secret ingredient” of applying a continuous and adaptive approach (a.k.a. agile culture, processes, methods, practices, and techniques). If done properly with the ability to adapt, this can lead to an increase in customer sales and an increase in team productivity. This finally leads to your incentive, which is an increase in company profits.  

Now is time to take a moment.  Are employees disenfranchised or fully engaged?  Are customers rarely engaged or is their feedback continuously engaged?  Is Agile just a trend that others should do or are you serious about Agile and the culture shift it requires?  Keep in mind, the combination of customer and employee engagement within an Agile context isn’t just a good idea, it is great for business.  

PS - to read more about the importance of customers and employees, consider reading Chapter 3 of the book entitled Being Agile.