Can Agile methods destroy an organisation?
Let’s take a typical Agile change approach to delivering features:
Let’s scale it to multiple teams….
Now I’ve got my teams busy! All producing features with a focus on solving problems and iterating. This is often how the Agile mindset is implemented.
Can you spot the issue with this?
So here’s the key problem, we’ve not considered the commercial impact of what we are building:
Is this feature being created to defend against competitors?
Is this feature being created to increase revenue?
Improve sales of core product
Increased sales of higher-priced tiers (e.g. SaaS subscription model)
A chargeable add-on
For the second set of reasons, we’re asking if anyone will pay for these features. It’s very easy to ask someone if they like something. Paying for something is entirely different! With this consideration, we can look at cost/benefit analysis.
How many sales do I need to make this worth building?
What evidence do I have that these sales will be successful?
This is what we mean by commercial viability. Being honest about ideas that are really exciting but won’t increase revenue can be difficult. Try to stop feature ideas early if they don’t meet these conditions.
Take a look at your organisation today, do you fall into this trap? Do you talk about the “value” of features without considering this?
If you’d like to know more about how to achieve this, the Commercial Agile Framework was specifically designed to avoid waste. It will help you stop building products that just burn through your money.
Do you have this problem in your organisation? Let me know your thoughts below!