How has Lean Startup principles change your thinking about the basic Agile principles or are they one and the same? -jd
Jeff Gothelf: Usually we’re treading into a conversation where I haven’t seen enough public discourse on it yet. The conversation is why are people hiring Agile today, versus why people hired Agile 10 years ago. Why are people implementing Agile, and I’m starting to see some conversation about it. And I think when we wrote the book, our thinking wasn’t as nuanced as it is now about that debate. We were essentially taking present day reasons for Agile implementation as the basis for our work and what I believe present day reasons are for Agile implementation is faster shipping of features. While I think that was not the intent of the authors of the manifesto and while it’s not the intent of companies and teams that adopted Agile 10 and 15 years ago, I believe that companies that are adopting Agile today, that are doing this wholesale transformation are doing so for the faster delivery of features, and what’s missing from that is a decision framework. A decision-making framework of deciding what we should actually work on, until what extent should we work on it, and how much design should go into it, and what is really the definition of done.
It’s moving away from the definition done being we shipped it to the definition of done being we shipped it, people like it, people use it, it’s changed their behavior which means they’re more loyal to us, they’re more successful using our product, which means that we’re more successful as a business and the outcomes change, and that’s really the definition of done.
When we wrote the book — here’s an opportunity to put a decision-making framework on modern implementations of Agile which based on our experience were largely based on incentivizing teams to efficiently deliver high-quality code.
Jeff is Next Week’s Business901 Podcast Guest
Jeff Gothelf is a designer, an Agile practitioner with a specific expertise in User Experience culminating in his book Lean UX. His daytime job is currently as Managing Director in Neo’s New York City office. Previously, Jeff has led teams at TheLadders, Publicis Modem, WebTrends, Fidelity, & AOL.
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