Leading from a Position of No Power:

1

• Leading from a Position of No Power
• A Customers Perspective of an Agile Team
• Alexia Bowers
• lex_at_ternarysoftware.com

2
Company Project Background

• Company Ternary Software
• Core Businesses are Service Oriented
• Outsourced Software Development
• Agile Training Consulting
• Holacracy Training Consulting
• Wanted own product Mainstream video game
• Internal Investment Project
• Agile Training Project

3
The Team

• My Experience
• Experienced Agile project manager/coach
• Programmer
• My Role
• Product Manager/Customer
• Developers Experience
• Technically experienced programmers
• Not highly experienced with Agile
• 1 senior programmer
• 1 artist

4
Project Challenges

• Hard Deadline for Industry Conference
• 3 month project
• Internal Project
• Poorly funded
• Team inconsistent
• Integrated Multiple Disciplines
• e.g. art, programming

5
Customer Role Challenges

• Customer role often least powerful space
• Have to rely on team to get work done!
• Power as product expert, sometimes
• Control of product, but little of process
• Must maintain business value vision
• Need to communicate for maximum creativity and
  clarity
• How to teach Agile from this space?
• Not in a coach role
• Hard to model customer service from this space

6
Specific Challenges

• Team quickly mastered specific technical
  practices but not all
• e.g. TDD, continuous integration
• Often over-applied principles
• Who doesnt when first learning?
• Customer interaction practices were sporadic
• Sometimes forgot that I was customer
• Sometimes felt challenged around business value
• Sometimes felt held at arms length
• Sometimes asked to micromanage make technical
  decisions
• Creative solutions were often to cut scope!

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What did I do?

• Was stubborn and involved
• Held out on cutting scope until options were
  explored
• Was an involved customer
• Acted dumb
• Technically Made team ask in terms of business
  value
• Agile Made team explain Agile in
  customer-friendly terms
• Got help
• Weekly meetings on coach points with senior
  programmer
• Encouraged Agile principles and practices
• They are important to me as a customer!

8
What I learned

• It is important to maintain clarity of customer
  role
• To represent business value and vision explain
  why
• Agile means creative solutions
• From conflict between business value and
  technology
• It is important to be an involved customer
• But not responsible for technical aspect
• All customers need customer service
• Service and respect remember the space

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Advice for Customers

• Be involved, not just present
• Work with the rest of the team to get business
  value met
• Expect good customer service
• Ask for it if you arent getting it
• Treat the rest of the team with respect
• We are all working together
• Ask technical folks to tone down techno-babble
• Get them to learn the business value vocabulary

10
Advice for Programmers

• Keep customer involved but not micromanaging
• Give updates high quality info for decision
  making
• Ask about business value, remember business
  value!
• Avoid techno-babble
• Talk in terms of business value
• Expect respect provide good customer service
• Remember where they are coming from
• Help them get what they need
• Encourage customer to maintain the business value
  focus
• Be sure to understand the business value of a
  solution

11
Summary

• The customer role must care for Business Value
• Strive for good solutions through creative
  conflict between Business Technology
• Customer Service has a big role in the
  Business/Technology relationship

12
QA

• Questions?