Agile Principle #4 Business people & developers must work together daily throughout the project.

Welcome to the Minimal Agilist's Desk. That is Agile principles #4. While most of us would today find this principle a bit out of place as we all work with business daily. But that was probably not the case 20 years back. lot has changed in 20 years not just in Tech but also how it is built and how it is used and how we interact with each other both as tech folks and as business people.

More Alignment Needed: But even today there is so much more we can do in ensuring a proper alignment between business and developers. So many more roles have come into the mix since this principle was written and more will come. So I want to just break this into some fundamental stuff so we can explore.

End Users: One important aspect is that a software or piece of tech is build for someone to use, in this case business. We have started using the term end user more now because the end user can be a whole different group of people than what we call business in our organization. So in that way I guess you can say tech is made for end users and not just business people.

Business People: But Business people are probably the group who are to have a better understanding of what endusers want and then you have intermediaries who will help translate what endusers might want and then also prioritize on what will add maximum value if built.

Business Value: So in one way Business People are the ones who can define the Business Value. Endusers might like a lot of things and all of it cannot be built. So how do you decide what to build and when. There comes the Business Value. Every feature you build will not have the same business value. It should not and will not...

Frequency: Now this whole idea of Daily, the frequency of meetings was probably very relevant back then when we used to get a set of requirements and then go into our windowless rooms and code till the sun rises. What happens when you have clarifications, what if you get stuck unable to understand what something really means. There used to be so many assumptions made and we all know the burden of wrong assumptions. I do have some scars like many of us who entered this field back then. Yes we have tried to turn those scars into story visuals in the new world though.

No it is not Clear: Now interacting daily is not that much of a grind today as before as we have so many modes to communicate and reach people. We are all Always On. Yet when it comes to requirements or the question 'Are we clear on what is to be done?' there are long silences at the end of which you hear someone succumbing to the pressure and valiantly says 'yes to start but we need more details'. It is just a better way to say No without sounding to be a bottle neck.

Multiple hats that don't fit: One cannot blame the business folks for that because we are all pressured by time and doing Scrum and Agile like we don't have another option. Never once asking why we are doing what we are doing. And then comes the multiple hats catastrophe. When you wear multiple hats there are going to be your primary, secondary and tertiary hats. Some fit you some don't and some just sits on top of your head ready to fall off and some cover your entire face. The question we should ask is how did we get here and how do we get out of here.

It is not all bad: Don't feel that I am pointing out that it is a grim scene, Not at all... there will be no place ever where there is no more room for improvement. But what I am interested is knowing what is our method of improvement. How do we know what we have to improve and how.

Working Together: This brings us back again to the principle "Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project". The 'work together' is a big element now more than ever. and that is where this principle finally gets me to. It is not just about developers and business people. It is about people, irrespective of your role we have to work together.

What are you doing?: Now coming to hats, we should often ask each other if we are wasting time doing things we are not good at or not interested to do or not supposed to do. We end up doing it just because no one ever questioned why it is being done that way. Why the heck is someone thrust a role without the needed help to settle into the role. We can always say it is crazy times and people have to pick up things. Yes good... and there will be people who will pick it up like you want and there will also be really talented great people who cannot just pick up things as you throw it at them. It is just not their forte. If you don't get it and you still call yourself a leader, you should really think about your role. Passing the hat is not the game, it is helping fit the hat(s)

Concluding with more to Unpack: To conclude this exploratory rant, there is a lot more to unpack here and some of them we will unpack as we head to other principles in coming days. Improvement, Working together, Feedback, Multi tasking, Value, Prioritization and so on. So Stay Tuned.

Penpositive Podcast News: The Penpositive Podcast is going strong. finally getting the hang of it. Nothing to do with professional stuff and there is way so many podcasts for that. Mine is now a Daily Podcasting Journal with Rant, Quotes and a Poem. Yes... Poetry. Some of the topics I talk about are 'I am Ignorant' , ' Yes I do Cry' and so on and have read poems including Tagore, Konstantine Kavafy (Did not read his Ithaca which I will do one day), Else Lasker Schuler and so on.. and also read a prose by Kafka one of the days. Here is the link and do listen subscribe and let me know. It is a work in progress and nothing else. Below is the Spotify Link of the latest #70 Episode based on a George Carlin Quote. You can also listen to 'The Penpositive Podcast' on Apple, Google and other major Podcasting platforms

Books: Reading has been good I will do more detailed posts on the books in the coming days. But two of the books I finished since I wrote last were 'The Data Detective' by Tim Harford and 'To Raise a Boy' by Emma Brown. And currently reading Sinan Aral's 'The Hype Machine'

Till I catch you all good people again, Stay Safe and Stay Kind.. And Yes.. Be Content and Be Penpositive !!! My Social Hangouts can be found here https://linktr.ee/vinodnarayan