Empty Customer Chairs – Illustrating the Absence of Customer Participation

Once upon a time, there was a company that said it was customer focused.  They used Agile methods to incrementally build software. At the end of an iteration, each team within the company would conduct a demo session.  The feedback from the demonstrations would be used to adapt the product toward what was deemed as customer value.  When the demo was investigated, it was learned that there were no actual customers or end-users in the demo. The question that may then be posed is if there are no customers in the demos, then what are the teams adapting too? 

What appears to be a challenge to some companies who say they are customer-focused or Agile, is how to successfully construct a functional demo.  The short answer is that customers or at least the end-users must attend the demo.  Of course this is more easily said than done.  The long answer is to establish a the Agile Customer Feedback Vision.  This vision is a strategy for identifying the right customers to attend, applying personas that represent the various customer groups, establishing feedback sessions throughout the work, and then motivating the customers to attend the feedback sessions. 

In the meantime, how do you highlight the problem of the missing customers?  Certainly those in the company understand that gaining customer feedback is important to the success of a product.  Even when providing companies with the mechanics of a customer feedback vision, customers are still found missing from the demos.  Why is that?  Maybe it's important to illustrate the obvious, that customers are indeed missing from the demos.    

One way to illustrate the obvious to companies and their teams is by applying the Empty Customer Chairs technique.   The Empty Customer Chairs is a visual way to highlight the absence of customers at a demo of the product.  The technique is applied by having 3 chairs that represent the customer at a demonstration. If customers attend the demo, they fill the chairs.  If no customers attend the demo, then the chairs remain obviously empty.  If the demo is held virtually, then 3 virtual screens are designated to customers.  If no customers attend, then those 3 screens remain empty. 

It would be hoped that a company or team realizes the benefit of customer participation.   Until such time, this technique can help you illustrates the obvious lack of customer participation that may have the intent to motivate the filling of those seats. At the end of the day, it is all about delivering customer value and this is a technique that can help you highlight the importance of this value through the absence of the customer. 

Gamification for your Agile Journey

Gamification adapts game concepts to nongaming situations to engage employees and motivate them to improve their performance and achieve a beneficial behavior. It rewards employees for completing performance levels with points, badges, privileges, and sometime monetary incentives. Gamification can be deployed as one of the possible techniques to engage employees as part of your Agile Journey.

The key to gamification is that it must be driven by a clear business goal with a clear outcome.  With the context of Agile, the goal with gamification is to encourage employees to become engaged in Agile, with the outcome of ‘giving back’ to the Agile community.  While your Agile journey may start with training and coaching, you eventually would like employees acting as Agile Champions to give back and start sharing their knowledge and experience within their colleagues.

As an example, let’s say you have established an Agile Education Vision with the goal of getting employees to give back to the Agile community.  As one technique, you decide to use gamification to motivate and engage employees to become Agile Champions and give back to their local community. Let's posit five levels of Agile Champion and the points needed to achieve each level:

• Steel: 5 points
• Bronze: 25 points
• Silver: 50 points
• Gold: 100 points
• Platinum: 250 points

By achieving certain levels, a precious medal badge is earned which the employee can add to their signature line and receive an award to support the behavior, both to recognize this achievement. The vision lays out the following education elements, together with the points earned by completing each one:

• Take the online “Agile Overview” for awareness: 5 points
• Attend Scrum Master, Product Owner, team, or manager training per your role: 20 points
• Take a variety of short online courses such as “How to Write User Stories” to build skills: 5 points each 
• Attend a 45-minute seminar/webinar on various Agile topics such as “Lessons Learned from Sprint Retrospective” to understand process: 5 points each
• Write an internal blog article and share with the internal Agile community: 25 points
• Create and present a webinar and share with the internal Agile community: 50 points

Notice that by taking the “Agile Overview,” the participant immediately becomes Steel level. This gets them into the game which may motivate them to keep playing. Also notice that the bigger point items promote giving back to the internal Agile community. This preferential valuation aligns with the goal of giving back while building their Agile knowledge along the way.

If you use gamification, ensure the achievement is real, that it helps the employee with their work, and is aligned with your Agile goals.  Finally, please remember that gamification is just one technique within your Agile toolkit in building an Agile community and having a successful Agile journey. 

PS - to read more about how Gamification can help you in your Agile journey, consider reading Chapter 16 of the new Agile book entitled Being Agile.