Know your users, nail your product

You can’t hope to create a successful product or service without knowing what makes your users tick. 

With this in mind, we’ve put together a case study of the Check what you might get project run by the Ministry of Social Development.

MSD wanted to make it easy for all Kiwis to learn about all the MSD support they’re entitled to. Find out how an intense focus on ease of use helped them develop an online eligibility guide that empowers all Kiwis to be strong and independent.

Agile training for the year of change ahead

2021 is going to be a year of change. Because Agile is all about responding to change, it’s the ideal approach in these tumultuous times.

So, if you’re not already working in an Agile way, you might want to try our online Agile Professional Foundation course.

Run via Zoom over four consecutive mornings (NZ time), it’s an in-depth introduction to the principles and practices of Agile.

It shows how iteratively developing a product or service that meets your users’ highest priority needs — reality-checking both product and processes as you go — ensures you’re always delivering what is most valuable here and now.

The course has been assessed by the International Consortium for Agile to make sure it’ll help you make the most of your move to Agile. As a result, completing the course gives ICAgile certification and the career boost this brings.

Course starts 15 February — book now to avoid missing out

We currently have only one session available:

15 – 18 February: 9.00am – Noon

To make sure everyone on the course gets the full benefit, we have to limit numbers, so secure your seats today.

Our top 5 blog posts of 2020

With COVID-19 dominating the year, it’s no surprise that two of the top five posts looked at ways of working remotely.

1. Connecting your team when COVID-19 has you working from home
   Our top post shared a bunch of ideas for ways to keep your team strong by keeping them connected when WFH.
2. How to run a Google Forms remote retro
   Also popular was our step-by-step guide to running a simple remote retrospective with Google Forms.
3. How to run a definition of done exercise
   Everything you need to know to run a whole-team exercise to create a definition of done that everyone understands and upholds.
4. The Extreme Programming customer: A product leader's guide
   This post looks at how to be an effective Agile product leader through the lens of Extreme Programming.
5. Ensure your software project succeeds: Project success checklist
   How to take a step-by-step approach to implementing 11 practices that have been shown to predict success in software development projects. It’s basically a guide to going Agile.

Here’s the Project success checklist PDF, to save you downloading it.

Guidance to help you implement each of the 11 practices from the checklist:

1. Does your project team have a shared vision for the project outcomes: the positive impact you’ll deliver your customers and your organisation?

• Product Vision presentations that inspire

2. Will your project team include a product owner or manager who is responsible for setting priorities based on these project outcomes, and who has the time and authority to give feedback quickly and decisively? 

• The Product Owner's guide to working with developers
• How to succeed as a Scrum Product Owner 

3. Will you complete top priority work first, and reprioritise as you learn more about your users’ needs, solution options or changes in the marketplace?

• Reduce software development risk with Agile prioritisation
• Prioritisation tools and tips for Agile projects

4. Will the team regularly check and improve their work, including through automated testing, code reviews, product owner acceptance checks and user testing, and through demos of working software at the end of each iteration that all stakeholders can attend?

• Deliver value via working software: Six signs of a successful Scrum Team
• Rapid feedback: Extreme Programming for product leaders
• Test Driven Development and Agile

5. Will the team regularly check the way they are working — in a safe and open environment — and make any changes that are needed?

• The art of the retrospective

6. Will your team work in short iterations of between 1 and 4 weeks, delivering working software at the end of each iteration?

• Deliver working software every iteration

7. Will your team try to break work into the smallest and simplest batches possible?

• How to reduce batch size in Agile software development

8. Will your team focus on fully completing each batch of work before starting the next, so they can limit work in progress? To do so, will they integrate and deploy code frequently, and do they have a shared, explicit understanding of your quality standards and what’s needed for work to be ready for deployment, demo or user testing? 

• Manage project risk by limiting work in progress
• Ensuring quality with the definition of done

9. Will the work of the team, including the amount of work in progress, be tracked on a prominent physical project board as well as any digital tool?

• How Agile transparency reduces project risk

10. Are the team empowered to deliver? Will the team organise the work themselves, share joint responsibility across the team, focus solely on the project, and be able to easily talk face-to-face or via video?

• Six signs of a successful Scrum Team

11. Are you open to trade-offs between scope, time and budget, while being uncompromising on quality?

• Success sliders exercise: How to agree what matters
• Quality on Agile projects: The Board Episode 9