Everyday Agile #1 Customer Value

Since I have been introduced to the Agile mindset, learned about it and applied it in professional projects, I started noticing the patterns and anti-patterns in every aspect of my daily life. In this blog series, I write about Agile Principles in everyday situations.

In any given week, I am someone's customer and someone's service provider. I buy something, I order something, I ask for information, I need help. Someone needs me to answer a question, give feedback, translate something, organize an activity. This "someone" can be a friend, family member, my partner, a neighbour, or somebody I am doing business with.

There are 12 Agile Principles, and I dedicate one post to each of them. When quoting the principle, I am replacing "software" with "solutions" to include areas outside of software development.

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Agile Principle #1: Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable solutions.

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I am fluent in more than one language, so friends sometimes message me to translate a small piece of text. My usual strategy is to send them a "quick and dirty" translation as soon as I have a couple of minutes, followed by contextual questions that will help me improve the definitive version. When I write the first version, I don't have all information available, and I need my friends' input. By sharing the first version early on, they receive a potentially usable product, which could already fulfil their need. At the minimum, they understand what I was trying to do and can supply feedback to course correct. This way, me (the service provider) and my friend (the customer) are working together on a final product that will be valuable in solving their problem (e.g. presenting themselves in a professional way to a company).

If I had been afraid of sharing an imperfect version and of showing my knowledge gaps, I would have spent more time making assumptions and likely would send my friend an inadequate text after a long wait.

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When I am the customer of service providers in a commercial or public organisation, I expect the same behaviour. Obviously, I would love to have my issue solved within minutes or a day, and never have to deal with it again. However, this is not the reality. People are overwhelmed by their workload, and often depend on third parties to act before starting the next step. This is why my second favourite kind of communication (the first being: "All good, issue solved."), is a quick status report, initiated by the service provider.

I am currently organizing the remodeling of my apartment, and deal with two professionals working in different departments of the same construction company. One of them shares updates with me in regular intervals, even when there is no progress: "I am waiting for the answer of X, have followed up today, expect a reply by [day]." The second person is like a black box: There might be progress with the request, but I have no way of knowing it. The person is probably waiting for the full resolution of the issue before connecting with me, but from my point of view, there is nothing happening at all. Moreover, the first person also provides me with actions that I, the customer, can take to speed up the process: "If you also send a reminder to X, it will increase the sense of urgency. Here is the e-mail address." Even though neither of them has good news for me, I am empowered by the partial solutions provided by the first person, and I can take informed decisions based on the updates. The lack of transparency of the second one eventually made me cancel that part of the order altogether and change to a different company.

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Did you experience something similar lately, in a positive or negative way?

If you are familiar with the Agile Principles, do you recognize Principle #1 in my examples?

I am curious to hear from you.