How Agile Projects Deliver on Business and IT Goals
To launch more successful products and services, today’s project managers and scrum masters need to ingrain themselves into not only the projects at hand, but the entire business model. Discover how to leverage key performance indicators and ask essential questions about requirements early in the project lifecycle.
To achieve success today, project managers, product owners, and agile scrum masters need to firmly embed themselves in their work environments.
But at what level? As agile practitioners and project managers, we often ask ourselves the following questions:
Should I be facilitating the daily scrum and monitoring stories to guide them toward completion by the end of the sprint?
Certainly.
Should I perform higher-level project planning?
Absolutely.
You need to break the project down into releases, group the stories by feature, and track critical deadlines that cannot slip. You also need to size the effort required, perform resource capacity planning, and maximize team velocity.
But do I need to expand my focus even further?
Emphatically, without a doubt, again, I would say yes.
Yes, you need to understand the business. This means embracing annual company goals, learning about the market dynamics and competitive landscape, and seeing your products and services from the customer’s view. It also means adapting to new technologies.
For example, automated technologies are replacing manual workloads that would otherwise be coordinated by business units. Today’s ITSM and ITOM products are changing the way business works, shifting the roles and methods of modern consulting. As a product owner, project manager, or scrum master, you are responsible for downstream project processes, workflows, and agile ceremonies that include cross-functional work teams. Therefore, to run an effective implementation there are additional business requirements to gather upfront. And to be truly groundbreaking, those requirements have to be maintained throughout the project lifecycle.
Business and IT have converged. Agile professionals and project managers are uniquely-positioned to leverage this union as we drive projects to completion. Ultimately, we strive to embed high-level business goals into each IT project.
One of the primary ways this relationship demonstrates itself is through key performance indicators (KPIs). To set the tone and prioritize project tasks upfront, define KPIs at the start of each project or for an entire portfolio of projects. Align your KPIs with your business goals.
Project teams can take KPIs one step further by rolling them into business processes. For example, a customer KPI might measure the ability to see specific attributes and relationships among configuration items in their CMDB. Delivering that KPI alone indicates project success; however, long-term it will enable the customer’s technical and business units to function more effectively.
A major advantage of using KPIs is that you can apply them to any kind of project including traditional projects, agile projects, new programs, trial projects, services, and other types of investment. At CDI, we achieve this by reviewing business needs at the project kickoff. This practice serves the project team well by aligning expectations before assigning responsibilities and jumping into design sessions.
Basic questions go a very long way. Many of these questions may seem redundant by the time the project kicks off, but reviewing, reiterating, and fostering open communication is important.
For example, at the start of a new project some questions I will typically ask include:
- How was the process or product managed and how is it currently managed today?
- Who will be managing the process or product after the implementation?
- Who is aware of this project and how is it being communicated?
- Who can make long-term decisions for the benefit of the customers or users?
- Do we have representation for each use case or feature for the process or product?
- What are some of the biggest pain points with the process or product?
- What improvements have been identified?
- Will this project deliver value and serve the needs of its customers?
When interviewing business stakeholders, I will also break these questions down to get a short-term picture and a long-term picture of the project goals. It’s also important to ask supporting questions to identify the reasons why a person feels a particular way, especially when their initial response is just a simple yes or no.
As an agile practitioner, you should cultivate a productive controlled environment where you can define a granular agenda that directly relates to your larger integrated audience of business stakeholders including managers, sales and marketing teams, and consultants. They will appreciate being included and can offer collective insight into the business impact allowing you to mitigate potential issues while the project is still in flight contributing to a soft landing when the project is complete.