11–20 of 428 posts
> Don't just build Something™, build an industry leading product that customers want and love! One of the biggest challenges is that someone eventually has to say "no" for that to happen. It is easier to just say yes to whatever is wanted than fight with someone about doing it.
Team 1 already knows their project won't be "bought", but they can't start on a new project yet, so what's the point of wasting developer time on it?
We are doing absolutely inane projects that have no hope of succeeding.
We serve a niche industry where certified professionals have to do certain tasks personally, instead of being able to delegate to secretaries. Somehow our CEO has been convinced that AI can be trained to do these tasks, at a reliability level not achievable by other humans.
Team motivation is in a weird space: everyone is relaxed because there is no pressure to succeed - we all know the project will fail unless someone develops well-perfoming, human-level AGI before Q4/2020. Lots of long lunches and checking out early in the afternoon.
At the same time, everyone is worried how terrible the fallout is going to be once the project reaches its inevitable conclusion.
Interesting times, but at least we can now tell investors we are a keen company with an AI play up our sleeve!
“Agile teams that truly iterate with the customer can often avoid these problems because the customer is there the whole way through and the team continuously pivots to close gaps discovered by the customer throughout the project, thereby building something the customer actually needs and wants.” I‘m 2 years into my first role as a product owner (made the switch from design) and working at a fortune 100. The thing th…
I’m in b2b SaaS, and the best approach I’ve found to combat this is to get involved in sales meetings. Salespeople look at you funny if you ask to come along, but if you convince them you aren’t weird it usually works. And you tend to make the meeting more successful, as well as getting actual useful insights into what prospects actually want.
Obviously using a throwaway here. Our board members got it into their heads that successful companies must have an AI "play", so they instructed the CEO to invest about 10% of our development budget on AI. We are doing absolutely inane projects that have no hope of succeeding. We serve a niche industry where certified professionals have to do certain tasks personally, instead of being able to delegate to secretaries.…
“Agile teams that truly iterate with the customer can often avoid these problems because the customer is there the whole way through and the team continuously pivots to close gaps discovered by the customer throughout the project, thereby building something the customer actually needs and wants.” I‘m 2 years into my first role as a product owner (made the switch from design) and working at a fortune 100. The thing th…
It's usually hijacked away from the actual customer - that is to say, a person who pays your company for products and/or services - to various internal "customers" who are nothing of the sort.
Spotify are ostensibly the Gods of Agile, but how many Spotify music customers were actually begging for podcasts? How many of them were begging for Spotify to lock podcasters behind their paywall and stop podcasts working with any tool? Was there even a single paying Spotify customer demanding that?
Failure of Agile can basically be summed up as: "customer not involved every day".