Topic

How to ensure the agile team delivers working solutions frequently - an Agile Principle

Response

The principle is:

The ability to deliver WORKING SOLUTIONS FREQUENTLY, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

The progress and performance of an Agile Team is measured based on the quality and frequency they deliver value. Typically, in the form of Features. This is contrast to traditional approached that used the completing of tasks as the primary method to measure progress and performance.

Requiring Agile Teams to focus on defining, creating and verifying their work-product as a series of small units of value, in other-words, Features on a regular basis, for example every few iterations, requires the Agile Team to prioritise their work having fully understood what is of most important for their customers.

The feedback the Agile Team receives from their customers every few iterations, provides three pieces of vital information:

confirmation the agile team has successfully translated their customers requirements into work-product.
confirms whether the Agile Team has the right competencies.
shows the newly formed Agile Team can adopt the Agile ways of working.

Because the Agile Team is required to deliver working solutions frequently, it’s necessary for the Agile Team to be committed to the project. This minimises context switching either within the project. It also promotes the need to limit the number of different projects individuals are assigned to at the same time.

With a sharp focus on delivering something of value within a couple of months, relieves the Agile Team from being required to invest precious time producing detailed requirements for other activities, because they maybe subject to change.

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Additional information, including working examples and templates are available in the Monetical knowledge base.