Using Lean Thinking to Increase the Value of Agile

Abstract:

“Agile doesn’t have a brain.” This quote from Bill Scott, ‎VP, Business Engineering and Product Development at PayPal, is provocative for sure, but it highlights the perception that in most organizations Agile is primarily applied as a downstream engineering approach. As such, it isn’t inherently concerned with optimizing product design and user experience, the biggest drivers of customer satisfaction. The feedback cycles that form the basis of Scrum provide verification and validation of stakeholder needs only as they are expressed in the backlog’s user stories. Even if a sufficiently empowered and accessible Product Owner is available, agile methods offer little guidance on how to translate organizational goals and customer needs into the backlog’s content and relative priorities in the first place. As a result, the danger persists that agile teams end up very efficiently building products that implement an incomplete and subjective perception of the wants and needs of both the organization and its customers.

In this session, we will explore how Lean thinking expands the “inspect and adapt” cycles of agile development and helps systematically determine which features and design choices really provide the greatest organizational value. After a brief introduction to Lean concepts, we will discuss how Lean approaches product development as a series of hypotheses about customers’ behavior and value perception and builds on Agile’s rapid iterative delivery of working software to test these assumptions. Finally, we will examine ways to derive testable assumptions from organizational goals, such as the Lean UX Hypothesis Statement template and Gojko Adzic’s Impact Mapping.

Bio:

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Mathias Eifert is a solutions architect and advocate for agility at all levels of the organization. He has more than fifteen years experience using lean and agile approaches to improve clients’ processes and build better systems. As a consultant to both public and private sector organizations, he has served in a variety of roles, including business analyst, developer, solutions architect, process improvement engineer, trainer, and agile coach. Mathias is a certified Scrum Master, Scrum Product Owner and Software Quality Engineer. He is active in the local agile community and has presented at various meetups.

Book Giveaway: 1 agile-related book

When: August 17th, 2015 at 6:00 pm (See Agenda Below)

Where: Excella Consulting, 6th Floor Arlington Tech Exchange, 2300 Wilson Blvd., Arlington VA 22201

Cost: Free thanks to our sponsors

Sponsors:

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Thank you to our main sponsor Excella Consulting for hosting our meetings and providing pizza and refreshments.

Excella is hiring! Check out the open job opportunities (https://www.meetup.com/DC-Scrum-User-Group/pages/Open_Job_Opportunity/) page. Excella is offering DCSUG members a discount for upcoming Agile training classes (http://excella.eventbrite.com/).

Agenda:

6:00 – 6:30 Arrive, mingle, pizza, network

6:30 – 8:00 Presentation/Discussion/Game/Workshop

8:00 – 8:30 Q&A and more networking

Can't make it this month?

We meet monthly. So if you can't make it this month, hopefully we'll see you at the next meetup. Also, if you have an idea, game, workshop, or story to share with the group, then please contact the organizer to setup a presentation for a future meeting.