Customer satisfaction through early and continuous delivery - Why we love Mc.Donald's

The very first Agile principle says that highest priority for any business is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery. When you place an order with Mc.Donald's the wait time is less than a minute, which is amazing. The quality is consistent, no matter which outlet you visit the experience is same - that's what makes a Brand. Mc.Donald's has adopted this best practices way before people were introduced to formal Agile methodology, which means Agile is a mindset - a way of life and a way of doing business and thus Agile is far beyond software, hardware and firmware. 

Sam Walton - Founder of Wal-mart Stores Inc. have said 'There is only one Boss.  The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

Mc. Donald's has been successful in identifying an opportunity in every problem they faced. For example, in 1975 a group of potential McDonald's customers had a problem: at that time, soldiers in a certain locale weren't permitted to get out of their cars while wearing their fatigues. After learning of this problem, McDonald's came up with a solution: add a drive-thru. That's innovation

Another example, In the mid-1980s, there were campaigns against McDonald's from the activist group London Greenpeace they alleged that actions taken to produce their packaging contributes to the destruction of environmental health. In response, McDonald's formally established a Global Environmental Commitment in 1990 that outlines the steps they have taken to reduce solid waste, conserve and protect natural resources, along with encouraging others to be accountable for their actions. One of results of this commitment is now over 80% of McDonald's consumer packaging is made from renewable materials - Now that's inspection and adaptation

Same with Software, we need to couple continuous integration with continuous deployments to enable early and on demand delivery of valuable software to the customer and retrospect regularly and keep correcting what's not going well. Every business faces challenges, the ones' that sustains are those who innovate and adapt to customers' needs and behavior

Key points to note here are

• Build quality within (Test Driven Development)
• Integrate and deploy continuously and consistently (Look at DevOps and Systems Engineering)
• Innovate and adapt to sustain in the market (Inspection and Adaptation)
• Get close to your customers so you can hear their voice and continuously improve.
• Align your processes to meet changing demands of customers