Mapping Agile and Continuous Discovery Habits
Mapping to Agile Values
Business Understanding & technical understanding
Technology personnel need to take an interest in business issues, and business personnel need to take an interest in technology issues. Neither should say, “I don’t need to know that.” Today, a holistic understanding of technology and business is necessary.
Impact
Impact with CDH: High
- Product trios include technical and business aspects. And via CDH their is a frequent translation happening.— tags:
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[[Mapping Agile and Continuous Discovery Habits ]]
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- Assumption Testing includes aspects of (business) viability and (technical) feasibility
- Opportunity-Solution-Tree includes Business Outcome to represent business aspect and looks at solutions and opportunities from user perspective and accessing e.g. technical feasibility on assumption level.
Thoughtfulness & Prescription
Thoughtfulness means considering context, and taking action only after one has attempted to understand the situation. Prescription means following predefined steps, as in a framework, unchanged and not tailored to the situation, without necessarily understanding or being thoughtful about those steps or what they are for.
Impact
High
CDH provides a is a powerful methodology to drive product discovery. It prescribes concrete practices and steps. Especially assumption testing aims to understand the solution and problem space, before wasting efforts on solving either not existing or unimportant problems or solving important problems the wrong way. Mapping opportunities with product & business outcomes maps to business context and the customers change in behavior.
Adaptability & Planning
Adaptability means expecting that plans need to change, and being prepared to revise plans. Planning is important because plans set direction for action, and they represent thought about what the best direction is.
Impact
High
Following CDH we have an high level plan how we get closer to a decision what exactly to deliver for a customer in order to address an impactful opportunity and create business impact.
At the same time we stay flexible in our discovery. With continuous customer contact we understand their opportunity space. With frequent and fast testing our assumptions we adapt solutions.
Individual empowerment & good leadership
Individuals need to have agency: they need to be allowed to decide how to perform their own work, and they need to be given the opportunity to innovate and express new ideas and take chances to try those ideas. By so doing, they exercise personal leadership. Leaders of others need to empower those they lead, but they also need to assess how much freedom those can handle, and position them for growth.
Impact
High
With CDH one can adjust leadership to the situation. Depending on maturity levels and impact of a topic, leadership can provide main direction with a business & product strategy that empowers product teams to derive detailed opportunities and solutions.
With business units in place a unit can define product outcomes and how this translates to business outcomes and align with Senior Leadership.
How Product Trios and product trio members address the opportunity and solution spaces is in their domain. Especially providing ideas and conducting fast assumption testing is highly welcome.
Outcomes & Outputs
Outcomes mean the direct and indirect end results that occur after one has taken action. Outputs refer to what is directly produced by an action: for example, working software is the output of a programming task. Outcomes require outputs, and both matter; but outcomes are what matter most.
Impact
High
Creating impactful business outcomes via product outcomes is a the core of CDH and one can see that by the OST that start at the top with the outcome.
CDH also optimises the way we work during product discovery and with the fast paced learning about opportunities and solutions. So we produce outputs faster, at the same time learn & adapt direction faster in order to produce outcomes.
Connecting to Agile 2 Principles
Planning, transaction & transformation
- Any initiative requires both a vision or goal, and a flexible, steerable, outcome-oriented plan. ⭐⭐⭐
- Any significant transformation is mostly a learning journey – not merely a process change.
- Change must come from the top.
- Product development is mostly a learning journey – not merely an “implementation.” ⭐⭐⭐
Product, portfolio & stakeholders
- Obtain feedback from the market and stakeholders continuously. ⭐⭐⭐
- The only proof of value is a business outcome. ⭐⭐⭐
- Work iteratively in small batches. ⭐⭐⭐
- Product design must be integrated with product implementation. ⭐⭐⭐
- Create documentation to share and deepen understanding.
- Those offering products and services should feel accountable to their customers for the impact of defects. ⭐
Data
- Data has strategic value.
- An organization’s information model is strategic.
- Carefully gather and analyze data for product validation. ⭐⭐⭐
Technical dimension & technical fluency
- Technical agility and business agility are inseparable: one cannot understand one without also understanding the other. ⭐⭐⭐
- Business leaders must understand how products and services are built and delivered. ⭐
- Technology delivery leadership must understand technology delivery.
- Technology delivery leadership and teams need to understand the business ⭐⭐
Frameworks & methodologies
- Fit an Agile framework to your work, your culture, and your circumstances.
- Organizations need an “inception framework” tailored to their needs
Individuals v. Team
- The whole team solves the whole problem. ⭐⭐⭐
- Foster diversity of communication and diversity of working style.
- Individuals matter just as the team matters.
- Both specialists and generalists are valuable. ⭐
- Different Agile certifications have unequal value and require scrutiny.
Team v. Organization
- Favor mostly-autonomous end-to-end delivery streams whose teams have authority to act. ⭐⭐⭐
- Foster collaboration between teams through shared objectives.
- Favor long-lived teams, and turn their expertise into competitive advantage.
Continuos Improvement
- Place limits on things that cause drag. ⭐
- Integrate early and often.
- From time to time, reflect, and then enact change. ⭐⭐⭐
- Don’t fully commit capacity. ⭐
Focus
- Respect cognitive flow.
- Make it easy for people to engage in uninterrupted, focused work.
- Foster deep exchanges. ⭐
Leadership
- The most impactful success factor is the leadership paradigm that the organization exhibits and incentivizes.
- Provide leadership who can both empower individuals and teams, and set direction. ⭐
- Leadership models scale.
- Organizational models for structure and leadership should evolve.
- Good leaders are open.
- A team often needs more than one leader, each of a different kind.
- Self organization and autonomy are aspirations, and should be given according to capability. ⭐
- Validate ideas through small contained experiments. ⭐⭐⭐
- Professional development of individuals is essential.
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