No Alarms and No Surprises

​A theme that has infiltrated many areas of business these days is the iterative process. Yes, it has been around for a long time when it comes to Agile development but it is so much more than that these days and there are many other business areas that are benefiting from it.


A core benefit of Agile development is the iterative process. It was the reason I moved across from Waterfall development, I wanted to know how to get faster feedback. I was frustrated by the fact that it took a long time to get my software in the hands of the user and by the time it was, it was either outdated or I found out that the requirements I had been given were not entirely accurate; when I had , in my eyes, already finished development. 

Being able to get a regular feedback loop in place significantly improved this process.  At first I felt it was restrictive as I was not releasing my software as quickly as before. Bugs or previously unthought out criteria being found by QA, meant that I wasn’t able to consider things done as quickly as before. However this frustration soon subsided after I found that my software wasn’t coming back to me after I had considered it done. This is when I really started to appreciate the fast feedback loop of the iterative process, despite the extra work it needs in the short term. 

1. The extra work done during the fast feedback loops is almost always less than the rework from a Waterfall approach, improving overall time to market
   
2. The fast feedback loops mean that changes in requirement can be captured during the development process, so less time is wasted when requirements become outdated (or were wrong in the first place)
   

So what other business areas can benefit from this approach?

Company objectives and personal objectives when approached using OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) can follow this theme. Doing away with the annual performance goals for employees and the months of planning that goes into setting company goals that are usually over a year out of date by the time they are delivered, can be a thing of the past. 

By setting quarterly goals for both the company (departments) and employees, we can add more flexibility and focus on delivering meaningful goals. If the climate changes, the goals change. Budgets are set accordingly so we are not wasting (insert currency of choice here) on outdated requirements. Whatever the most important area of focus is for employees can be adjusted for the quarter. Heck, you can even adjust them within the quarter if you are feeling that crazy! We should not be getting to the end of the year or even the quarter with questions over progress. The company, the employees, the managers, should all know what the current status of progress towards the goal is. There should not be surprises at the end of the year, where a company or employee finds out they didn’t do enough or the effort they put in was great but due to xyz, what we set out to do was no longer the game changing priority it was when we committed the company budget to it. 

Over the last couple of years working closely with CS (Customer Success), one of my pet peeves has become not knowing if a customer is happy. At the outset of the relationship CS works with the customer and Sales team to establish what they are paying us for and off we go. Under no circumstances should the next time we talk to the customer be when we are reviewing their contract renewal. All this leads to is panic, running around fixing things and and building out last minute features to make sure a Save Plan is fulfilled. 

To avoid this unnecessary panic, customer QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews) are the answer. If you have thousands of customers then meeting all of them quarterly might not be realistic. This all depends on your business model. I’m not expecting Netflix to call me anytime soon to make sure I renew. If you have lots of customers then maybe reserve the QBRs for the biggest contracts. But if you value a relationship, and by value I mean you can’t afford a nasty surprise at contract renewal time, then make sure you have QBRs. These will make sure you are delighting the customer, your business is providing tangible value to their business, and your roadmaps are aligned to create a meaningful partnership.

So, the answer to no surprises is, if you want to ensure you don’t have a job that slowly kills you or bruises that won't heal, make sure you have an iterative feedback loop in your process.