Focus On Influencing The Customer
The team must be consistently able to influence the customer in its role of trusted advisor. When the customer brings unrealistic expectations over the rate of delivery or the viability of potential solutions the team uses its influence, supported with data and other information, to change those expectations. The customer, in turn, must be willing to be influenced by the team in its role of trusted advisor.
In a Nutshell
Research and development activities enable teams to present options for meeting customers’ needs. The customer may understand their need but will not always understand the best (or, perhaps, any) solution for meeting that need. The expertise of the Team enables them to present other solutions to satisfy the need. The Team can guide the customer by presenting the advantages and disadvantages of alternative approaches. They can prototype, demonstrate, run experiments and carry out research in the market place to provide the customer with the data to make their decisions.
Another area for exercising influence is to manage the expectations of customers. Expectations - especially about what will be delivered and when - once set will often become fixed in the mind. Even worse a commitment may be perceived even though no commitment has been made. Perceived commitments will never be met, creating the perception of failure on the part of the team in the customer’s mind. This will destroy the trust between the customer and the team very quickly.
We must be alive to the risk of unachievable expectations and always seek to manage these at a realistic level. Where we find that unrealistic expectations have been formed, we should seek to reset these at the earliest opportunity.
Implementing Practices
Teams plan work to fill their short-term planning horizon. With a clear understanding of current priorities and the capacity of the team, work items are chosen to satisfy the forthcoming delivery goals. The team elaborates the plan as necessary to ensure that there is a shared understanding of the work that is required.
The Product Backlog is the vehicle by which needs are turned into requirements and requirements are turned into operational features in our product. It is a prioritised list of the work that the team currently intends to deliver in the next period of time. The less imminent a feature is, the less well it will be defined.
The Product Roadmap provides a simple view of how the product will grow towards its vision. As a forward looking view, the roadmap does not set fixed priorities or deadlines. Rather it is a fluid view that evolves as our understanding of customers’ needs evolves. Roadmaps are influenced by concerns in addition to the customers’ needs. These may include our capability and capacity to deliver change and the business, financial and legal context in which our product operates.