Leveraging an Agile Mindset to Deliver Customer Value

In a world that is changing faster than ever before, one of the top priorities for Agilists is to adapt to continuous change while delivering customer value faster and better than ever before - a challenging task!

Adopting an agile mindset is crucial for navigating the complexities of rapid market shifts, technological advancements, and evolving customer expectations.

However, there are simple yet effective practices that can significantly enhance an Agile journey. This session will introduce a straightforward 3-step “Value Delivery Framework” designed to be implemented immediately, ensuring that organizations can deliver customer value more efficiently and effectively.

Through this framework, teams can achieve higher levels of productivity, responsiveness, and customer satisfaction. Additionally, supporting Business Case Studies from various experiences will bridge the gap between theory and practice, offering a comprehensive and practical knowledge-sharing experience.

Attendees will gain insights into real-world applications of an agile mindset, making it easier to drive continuous improvement and deliver customer value in their own organizations.

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About Max Ekesi:

Max Ekesi has held various leadership roles in IT for 22+ years in PMO, Software Development, and Product Organizations. He has been leading Agile IT Transformations since 2007 in companies such as Dell, General Motors, Whole Foods/Amazon, and now PayPal.

Max loves leveraging Agile and Kaizen principles to continuously find ways to deliver customer value faster and better. He has been actively involved with Agile Austin for 12+ years and is presently serving on the Board as President.

In his spare time, Max enjoys playing, watching, and coaching soccer, and traveling the world with his wife and two daughters.

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Overview

Introduction to Measuring Customer Satisfaction and Engagement Metrics

In this video, industry expert Max explores effective methods for measuring customer satisfaction and engagement metrics. The purpose of this video is to offer insights into how businesses can go beyond traditional survey methods to accurately assess and enhance the customer experience. Viewers will learn about alternative metrics, the significance of perceived value, and practical strategies for applying these insights in real-world scenarios.

Key Points Discussed in Customer Satisfaction Measurement

The video covers essential aspects of measuring customer satisfaction and engagement. Max begins by addressing the limitations of traditional Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, noting that their low response rates can compromise their effectiveness. Instead, he suggests leveraging software analytics to monitor user engagement and behavior as a more reliable metric. The discussion also emphasizes the importance of defining perceived value both pre- and post-product launch. Max highlights the need to reduce user friction, such as minimizing clicks in an app, and to validate these changes to ensure they truly enhance the user experience.

Expert Insights on Enhancing Customer Experience

Max provides expert insights on improving customer satisfaction through practical measures. He advocates for passive monitoring methods, such as tracking customer retention and software usage, to gain valuable data without relying solely on surveys. As Max puts it, “The most success I’ve had is when the customer doesn’t have to fill out a survey; instead, monitor usage through your software.” He also underscores the importance of involving focus groups or customer advisory boards to gain deeper insights and connect teams with end-users. Max suggests using brief video recordings to effectively communicate product value, noting, “Expose your teams to real users through brief recordings; it brings purpose and context.”

Practical Applications of Customer Engagement Insights

The insights shared in this video can be directly applied to enhance customer satisfaction and engagement strategies. Businesses can use alternative metrics like software analytics to better understand customer behavior and improve their offerings. For instance, reducing the number of clicks required in an app can streamline user interactions and boost satisfaction. Engaging with focus groups or using video clips for internal communication can also help teams align their efforts more closely with customer needs and expectations.

Conclusion and Key Takeaways on Customer Satisfaction Strategies

In conclusion, this video provides actionable strategies for measuring and improving customer satisfaction and engagement. Key takeaways include the importance of utilizing alternative metrics such as software analytics, defining perceived value, and involving focus groups in the product development process. Viewers are encouraged to implement these strategies to refine their customer experience efforts, seek ongoing feedback, and make data-driven decisions to enhance their products and services.

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Transcription

Speaker 2
(0:13) Well, good afternoon, everybody. (0:16) Thank you so much for coming to our first 2024 Hyperdrive Agile lunch and learn session with a friend and colleague of mine based out of Austin, Texas, Max Akesi. (0:30) I can’t say enough good things about Max.
(0:33) He and I were on the board of directors together for Agile Austin. (0:37) We helped kind of revamp, reboot, I guess you could say, the whole Keep Austin Agile conference that was up there, which he might have a couple words to say about. (0:48) Max is just one of those just amazing caring people who has such a deep passion for everybody, everything, and especially the topic he’s going to talk about today.
(0:59) I think you’re going to be really drawn in from just his passion with that whole area.(1:05) And so without further ado, let me just turn it over to Max. (1:09) Max, welcome.
(1:10) Thank you so much for being here today.

Speaker 1
(1:13) Oh, Steve, stop, stop. (1:16) I’m starting to feel special. (1:20) Do you?
(1:21) As you can tell, Steve and I, we know each other, and I didn’t even know that he was going to be here as part of this Hyperdrive thing when Sherian and some other people were contacting me. (1:31) So this world keeps on getting smaller, does it not? (1:35) Can you all see my PowerPoint slide, my intro slide?
(1:39) Awesome. (1:39) Awesome. (1:40) And as Steve said, oh, it’s awesome.
(1:42) I’ve got like a whole screen of people that I can see. (1:45) This is great. (1:46) I feel as if we are talking to each other here.
(1:49) Mostly me doing the talking, but we are here together. (1:52) OK, so I’ll get straight into it, folks. (1:56) And if you have questions, please do feel free to put it in the chat.
(2:00) Steve is going to be like a moderator for the questions, and I’ll try to pause as I go through this. (2:07) But in the interest of time, I want to make sure that there are key points that I convey today and then make sure that there’s some time for Q&A. (2:16) But again, key points to convey.
(2:19) And as I said to Steve before we started, this is a topic I’ve been very passionate about for a long time. (2:25) You know, if I start speaking too fast or get too loud, just tell me to calm down and just give me a signal. (2:31) OK, but we’re going to have a fun time.
(2:35) OK, so to start with the topic today, leveraging an agile mindset to deliver customer value. (2:42) Why do I even care about this? (2:44) Before I introduce myself and everything, why do I care about this so passionately?
(2:49) Well, first thing is delivering customer value. (2:54) A couple of months ago, right before the holidays, I was at a corporate happy hour. (3:00) And this person was that I was chatting with.
(3:02) We’re talking about process frameworks that help you deliver things faster and better and all the very good. (3:08) And he just, you know, made a blunt statement. (3:10) I don’t care what we do and everything.
(3:12) I just want people to get it done. (3:14) I want people to deliver on time. (3:16) And I looked at him and I said, there was a time where I would agree with you.
(3:20) Yeah, just a deliver on time. (3:23) But now I don’t. (3:24) It’s not enough to deliver things on time.
(3:28) You have to deliver customer value. (3:33) And there is an actual difference between those two. (3:37) And that’s a lot of what I’m going to talk about.
(3:40) But the reason I feel very passionate about this, because it is not very well practiced.(3:45) And as we’ve seen through the history of companies that used to dominate the landscape and are not around anymore, if you do not deliver customer value, somebody else is going to do it for you. (4:00) It’s as simple as that.
(4:02) And I like to leverage an agile mindset, my agile mindset, the agile values of individuals and interactions, working software, responding to change, customer collaboration. (4:15) That is what agile is to me, is the values. (4:18) And to me, it’s a mindset thing.
(4:19) For some people, it’s a methodology. (4:21) For some people, it’s a process framework, whatever they want to call it. (4:24) It’s a mindset approach to things.
(4:27) So that’s what I’m passionate about. (4:30) And that’s what we’ll be talking about.(4:32) Please, I don’t want to take too much time talking about myself.
(4:36) But I just would like to introduce myself. (4:39) Max Akesi. (4:40) I’ve lived in Austin since 2001.
(4:44) Love it here. (4:46) I’ve grown with the city. (4:47) And my daytime job, IT Senior Manager at PayPal, one of the better companies I’ve been at in my whole journey.
(5:00) Married. (5:01) Sarah’s my wife. (5:02) Sasha is 11.
(5:04) Simona’s nine. (5:05) My favorite hobby is just traveling with my family. (5:09) There, we were in DC.
(5:11) And I tried to get behind the podium at the White House to just make a quick announcement and things didn’t go as planned, right? (5:18) But I got close. (5:20) I got close.
(5:21) And I speak at conferences and meetups all the time. (5:25) Love it just to hang out with people that just want to learn something new and do things in an agile way. (5:34) I put the companies that I’ve been at mainly to share.
(5:39) I’ve always worked at massive enterprises that have IT organizations that are thousands of people, just the IT organization itself. (5:48) So I don’t know what it would be like to be at a startup, to be at a small agile consulting firm or whatever the case may be.(5:56) So that is where I come from.
(5:58) That is where my experience comes from, right? (6:01) So I have learned more from failures in the agile transformation space than successes by far, okay? (6:10) 2007, I called out because that was a life-changing year for me when I was thrown into a team as Scrum Master.
(6:18) And I was like, Scrum what? (6:21) We’ll send you to a CSM class. (6:23) And I became a CSM in November of 2007.
(6:27) And so the first thing I said is, let’s create a product backlog. (6:30) And all of that stuff never turned back since then. (6:34) I’ve been leading transformations, like scaling, like doing all sorts of things in the agile space at Dell, GM, Whole Foods that was acquired by Amazon.
(6:47) I did a lot of work on the integration stuff with Alexa and Prime on that. (6:53) And then now at PayPal, right? (6:55) That’s where I come from.
(6:58) Just quick disclaimer, okay? (7:00) I’m not here as part of PayPal. (7:02) I’m not here as the president of Agile Austin, though I am.
(7:07) I’m speaking specifically from my own viewpoints and my experiences, right? (7:12) From what I’ve gone through. (7:14) And during this next 40 minutes or so, I’d like to really talk about what I call the value delivery framework.
(7:25) And there are three things, three things as takeaway that I’m going to talk about. (7:30) And I’ll end this presentation with the same three things, okay? (7:34) It’s about prioritization, okay?
(7:37) It’s about visualization, and it’s about measure. (7:42) So prioritize, visualize, measure.(7:45) And I’ll talk about these things because in all my experiences, when I’m trying to deliver customer value, these are the three things that have just bubbled to the top that just need to get done right.
(8:01) There’s a bunch more things that you can do to help you deliver customer value faster and better. (8:07) But for what I’ve seen, I like to talk about this three key things. (8:11) These three steps that have a lot connected to it can be game-changing.
(8:16) I found it to be. (8:19) And what I want to do, which I’m surprised that more speakers do, is connect a personal case study. (8:27) When we did this, and what the results were, so that you connect the theoretical and the practical.
(8:35) And so that sometimes gets a point more across. (8:39) And I don’t know why more people don’t do this, but that’s how it’s going to be. (8:43) First and foremost, can we get a quick poll?
(8:47) Because I just want to find out one quick data point. (8:51) So Steve, please, everybody get ready to answer the poll question. (9:02) Yeah, Rod, you might have to take off your gloves.
(9:04) Yeah, that’s a good call. (9:05) There you go. (9:06) You’re getting ready.
(9:08) It’s cold wherever you are. (9:11) All right. (9:12) And the poll is up.
(9:13) Just to get an idea of the Agile experience we have right here on this Zoom call. (9:20) Less than a year. (9:21) You’re fairly new to Agile.
(9:23) One to three years. (9:25) You can be dangerous. (9:26) You can be dangerous.
(9:27) You know some terminologies. (9:28) You know various things. (9:30) And three to 10, you’ve seen a lot of failed and successful transformations.
(9:36) You’ve seen them. (9:38) And over 10 years, you’re a veteran at that point. (9:43) You’ve been doing anything in the Agile space for past 10 years.
(9:47) You know, I’ve been, I’m hovering around 17 years. (9:50) And yeah, it’s just like, there’s so much that you come across. (9:56) Okay.
(9:56) How many people do we have now? (9:59) Oh, we need more responses. (10:01) How many responses?
(10:02) I mean, do you see there, Steve?

Speaker 2
(10:06) So we see that the poll is open. (10:08) But for many, I only see five responses on the screen. (10:15) And then it didn’t come up.
(10:17) Can you see the poll? (10:18) Can you see the poll?

Speaker 1
(10:20) Ron, does not see the poll. (10:23) Lauren does not. (10:23) I can’t see the poll either.
(10:25) Oh, we’re having a technical kind of issue. (10:28) Okay. (10:29) So why don’t we do this?
(10:31) Let’s improvise because we respond to change, right? (10:34) Put in the chat, according to what I’m just about to tell you, where you are from your Agile experience.(10:43) Below one year, you’re a one.
(10:46) Three, one to three years, you’re a two. (10:51) Three to 10 years, you’re a three.(10:54) So three to 10 years, you’re a three.
(10:56) Over 10 years, you’re a four. (10:58) So it goes up from one brand new to Agile to four.(11:04) And…

Speaker 2
(11:04) Yeah, I’m seeing a lot of threes and fours, couple ones and twos in there. (11:09) But the majority, I’m seeing threes and fours.

Speaker 1
(11:10) Threes and fours?

Speaker 2
(11:12) Excellent.

Speaker 1
(11:13) Excellent. (11:13) So you folks are going to be able to follow me all along. (11:17) Let’s do it.
(11:18) Let’s do it. (11:19) You see? (11:20) Technology just plays a trick on you every time, every time.
(11:26) Hey, Steve, thanks for failing on that, okay? (11:29) I just want to let you know.

Speaker 2
(11:30) It’s my pleasure to be a failure. (11:31) We’ve learned more from our failures.

Speaker 1
(11:37) So let’s start with prioritize. (11:39) You remember it was prioritize, visualize, measure, right? (11:43) Okay.
(11:43) Value a delivery. (11:45) Why prioritize work? (11:47) I have had so many discussions with executives about, if you don’t prioritize, we’re going to have challenges, okay?
(11:57) We’re going to have challenges. (11:58) We have my CEO. (12:00) Hey, pal.
(12:01) He was on CNBC talking about, we are feeling really good about things that we’re going to do. (12:08) We have prioritized. (12:09) There was so much work that we did.
(12:10) We brought it down to our top five priorities. (12:13) And that was great because I could really feel it. (12:16) We are so much more focused at PayPal, but that’s just top five.
(12:19) I am telling people you have to prioritize. (12:23) One, two, three, four. (12:25) Because the way you prioritize, you are going to develop that software in an iterative way.
(12:31) And then you will deliver it in an iterative way. (12:35) You’ve got to prioritize and do one thing after another. (12:39) You focus, you deliver.
(12:41) And what happens when you’re able to do that, you’re able to do a gazillion other things because you are delivering value in an iterative way. (12:52) You can get feedback in an iterative way. (12:54) You can continuously improve in an iterative way.
(12:57) But all of this only happens if you prioritize. (13:02) If you prioritize, okay? (13:04) And I’m going to go into the details of that because I have come way too many times across people that just get so much at once and they just churn.
(13:16) And they just churn entire teams and the whole organization. (13:24) And then what happens? (13:25) It gets even more complex because there’s all these dependencies.
(13:28) And what do I do first? (13:29) And how do I tackle? (13:31) And my product person is only prioritizing part of the work and all that.
(13:34) You have to prioritize in a way that not only you start at the top. (13:39) You start at the top with prioritizing your strategic initiative at the very top. (13:46) And then within whatever tool that you use, I am going to be tool agnostic, process agnostic.
(13:54) You might be doing this with, say, for scaled agile or less than everything. (13:57) I am agnostic to all of that as I’m talking about this, okay? (14:02) Whatever tool that you use, you will cascade the priorities through the tool.
(14:08) And I’ll show you a specific example of what we did in the past and it worked, okay?(14:15) But think about the conceptually, you cannot have just all these five or 10 things are priority number one, and then you have to stack rank the prioritization, okay? (14:27) And this will also address dependencies.
(14:30) How many people here have challenges with dependencies work? (14:34) Like, you know, this application team asked for stuff from this application team and we don’t know who has to work on stuff first and all that. (14:41) I’ve been through too many dependency management issues.
(14:46) There’s gotta be a way. (14:48) There’s gotta be a simpler way, okay? (14:50) And there’s something that we did years back that really worked.
(14:54) And I’d like to share this case study here with you. (14:57) So I’ll tell it from a perspective of, let’s say that we are a company, okay? (15:03) Hypothetically speaking, Whole Foods.
(15:06) And we have to roll out some big kind of, I mean, like a huge, I mean, like initiative, which is, you know, we need to bring this feature to all our folks on Android devices and, I mean, Apple devices, I mean, iOS, okay? (15:29) So this is a particular thing that we wanna do. (15:31) We want to make sure that they can see all the food that is in a particular store, okay?
(15:38) So the business then says, we’re gonna drop that down. (15:42) This is our top priority, our top strategic number one priority. (15:46) But we’re gonna drop it down to, I mean, iOS folks and the Android folks.
(15:52) But we’re gonna do, I mean, Android first. (15:54) That is business solution number one is roll out Android features. (16:01) And we’re going to prioritize this by a company, by a country, we’re gonna say Canada.
(16:06) And so when we’re rolling this out, we actually say, what are the features that we wanna see in Android users in Canada, okay? (16:18) Feature 1.1, because the strategic, sorry, I meant initiative was one. (16:24) The business solution was 1.1. Then we break it down to the feature. (16:29) There’s a unique identifier. (16:30) You follow the unique identifier, 1.1.1. Then feature priority number two under that business solution is 1.1.2, and it goes on, right?(16:41) So we have a bunch of features where we say, first, the feature number one, we have to help our customers find the stores closest to them.
(16:51) Because depending on the store, then we’re gonna display the products in that store.(16:56) We are not gonna know what products they are because different products are in different stores. (17:01) So we’re gonna go, so we prioritize things according to the way the work is gonna flow.
(17:07) And so let me say, I break down the second feature. (17:11) I have to break that down.(17:12) We had to break it down into epics because we have our tools and we’re breaking down this work because different teams are doing different work.
(17:28) So we don’t know where all this work is going, but we are identified it by the unique identifiers and we’re cascading the priority. (17:37) We’re cascading in it. (17:39) Then as we get to, I mean, the epics, that’s when the epics get handed to actual development teams.
(17:47) So there’s an epic.1.1.2.3. But this is not the only one that is gonna be given to a team.(17:57) A development team is getting all these epics from the product manager that is breaking down all this work, handing it to them. (18:05) How are they going to do this work, right?
(18:08) How? (18:10) Well, we have prioritized. (18:14) They do not even have to think about it.
(18:18) They just start with the epic that has the highest priority because it’s connected to the number one American initiative and they break down that work. (18:29) They break down that work. (18:31) Now, folks, I’ve gone through this pretty fast.
(18:34) This took months to build it out and everything, but I’d like to test you all very quick.(18:39) What is the second highest priority of epic that this team would have to do according to this? (18:48) Can you type this out in the chat very quickly?
(18:53) The first one was 1.1.2.3. Hold on. (18:59) There is no 1.1.2.2 here for this team, but there is 1.3.4.1. There you go. (19:09) What is the second highest priority?
(19:11) And we’ll end here. (19:13) What is the third highest one? (19:14) Because 1.3.4.1, what’s the next one that this team has to do? (19:19) What is the next of the epics that this team has to do? (19:24) Bingo. (19:26) Do you know what this shows?
(19:28) This shows that you were able to figure out the prioritization process that we used.(19:34) And this is the most important thing. (19:37) It’s simple.
(19:38) When there’s a bunch of work that is coming into a team, they cannot just be like confused, be like the person with a gazillion sticky notes and everything. (19:47) They’ve got to know immediately what is the work that I take on now. (19:52) Forget all this dependency management.
(19:55) We’ve got to talk with people. (19:56) We’ve got to schedule a meeting. (19:57) It’s got to be easy.
(19:59) Things that are easy work for people. (20:02) We use Google search because it’s easy.(20:04) If I had to stroll, put in the location that I’m in, do various things, I wouldn’t use Google search anymore.
(20:13) Okay? (20:14) I don’t know if I’d switch to Bing. (20:16) There’s not much of a choice there.
(20:17) But the fact is we use things that are simple. (20:23) And then the one thing, there was one big problem with this. (20:29) There was one big problem because when you do things, it worked great to say which work is handed first and everything and prioritize across the entire organization.
(20:39) So the one strategic initiative, all the work spread across dozens of teams, 20s, 30 teams, all that work gets done first. (20:49) That was incredible. (20:51) But we noticed that some of the initiatives were too big.
(20:55) So we had to tell people, you can’t have an initiative that goes on two years. (20:58) You cannot have an initiative that even goes for the whole year. (21:01) We have to narrow it down to an initiative size, which the example I gave you was we’re deploying these mobile features to Canada first because it’s our smallest market.
(21:14) And we’re going to start off there and do just this handful of stuff and get it to market real fast. (21:19) That was something that we were able to do start to finish within six months.(21:24) It works when your initiatives at the top are small.
(21:27) If you have big initiatives that go years, it doesn’t work. (21:31) That was the one key thing. (21:33) And I will just say, as I conclude on this, getting executives to prioritize work at the VP tier is extremely challenging.
(21:45) Nobody wants to agree on anything. (21:49) Everybody has their own priority and that’s it. (21:52) So that was the number one challenge, along with the challenge of the initiatives being too big.
(21:59) But once we were able to get past that, it was incredible. (22:03) We saw our strategic initiatives get done faster than we ever did. (22:10) That is prioritization.
(22:12) Okay. (22:12) Again, if you want to drop some questions or whatever, fine, but I’ll just go on. (22:18) Okay.
(22:19) So visualize work. (22:23) I mean, first of all, why do I even bother to say that we have to visualize the work, right? (22:31) I love being a knowledge worker.
(22:35) I love it. (22:36) I can work from anywhere in the world. (22:38) I’ve got flexibility of having to work in the morning, the afternoon.
(22:41) I don’t have to go into a place where there’s an assembly line or have a set schedule and everything. (22:46) I love it. (22:47) Okay.
(22:48) But you know what the one problem is? (22:51) Is that it’s tough to visualize your work. (22:55) Okay.
(22:56) It was tough before when we were actually in offices and we had some Kanban boards on the boards and stuff like that. (23:03) But it is just with all the tools that we have with Azure DevOps, Jira, all the various stuff. (23:09) It is just tough to visualize.
(23:11) An assembly line worker goes to the assembly line and they can immediately see whatever assembly line is. (23:16) You’re building jets, like you’re building cars. (23:19) You’re building pens, whatever it is.
(23:22) When things stack up, when you don’t have enough of supplies or something, you can see it immediately. (23:26) For us in the knowledge space, it is very challenging. (23:31) Okay.
(23:31) And so you have to make your work visual. (23:37) Okay. (23:38) And I will just say that the most agile, high-performing team that I ever experienced was back in 2010, a while ago.
(23:50) I miss it so much, honestly. (23:52) There were like five people around the desk with all the Kanban boards around us. (23:59) It was incredible.
(24:01) We would see whenever anything got stuck. (24:03) We would see who had to jump in and everything to move the sticky note and everything. (24:07) It was visual.
(24:08) Managers, executives would pass by the room to check. (24:11) Our stakeholders would just pass by and see where things that they care about is on the board. (24:16) It wasn’t, everybody was aware.
(24:19) Hey, the perfect thing about that, the perfect thing about that. (24:22) When that happened, we never had to do a program status report. (24:26) We never had to put a PowerPoint together.
(24:29) Nobody cared about our burn down rate in hours, burn down, burn up, anything.(24:37) Nobody cared about that. (24:38) They could just see within, again, as easy as the prioritization, they could see within four or five seconds if they had a concern or not.
(24:47) Okay. (24:47) So all through my years, come to the conclusion that there are a lot of workflow visualization that are not very useful. (24:58) They have a limited amount of usefulness.
(25:02) Static status reports. (25:04) As soon as you create it and you presented a PowerPoint slide, a screenshot of something, it’s static. (25:10) That’s it, right?
(25:12) Anything that requires manual updates. (25:16) I am in the middle right now of connecting tools, telling people how do we connect tools and stuff so that whatever work is being done by people in the trenches that are actually doing the work in their tools gets automatically cascaded upwards to all the other portfolio and program management tools.(25:37) If any stakeholder wants to know what we’re doing, it should be something that they can find out within three to five seconds.
(25:46) If we have to do a program status update, there’s something wrong. (25:50) Anybody here, if you’re involved in creating program status updates and all of that for people, I’m going to say that might be useful, but it’s not the most useful way to visualize the work that is getting done. (26:06) So I’ve always said, things have to be generated automatically.
(26:11) This is not easy, but it has to be a focus. (26:14) And then it’s easy to understand.(26:17) I cannot emphasize if something is not easy, people will not use it.
(26:22) People will not look at it and that’s it. (26:25) And we continuously create reports that are hard to read, that you have to click through, that you have to do all these other things.(26:31) It just doesn’t work, okay?
(26:34) And all stakeholders, I have heard throughout my career, like phrases that just to me, just get me so concerned. (26:43) But a lot of people are just okay with it. (26:47) Like, oh, our business stakeholders don’t know what we’re doing.
(26:51) We need to do a status report. (26:54) We need to send, I mean, an email with it.(26:58) And to me, it’s like, why do people have to even be concerned of what work is going on?
(27:04) That’s a fundamental problem. (27:06) You have to make work visual to all stakeholders. (27:10) If you don’t, there will be problems.
(27:14) So what we did in a particular case is that we created, we connected all the tools.(27:24) It was JIRA to a portfolio planning tool. (27:28) And we created what we called a roadmap view.
(27:32) It was top to bottom, everything that we’re doing. (27:37) And all the stuff that we talked about before, the Amic initiative to the, business solution to the feature, all the breakdown, you could just see it in the tool. (27:50) And it’s live because as work gets done on the lower things from the stories, the US is the user story that the team is doing.
(27:59) As those get done, then the epic is completed. (28:03) As the epic is done, the feature, right? (28:06) Is the feature in the middle here that is broken down into the epics and the stories.
(28:13) As the features get done, the business solution then is gonna, and we got it to the point that even though it wasn’t very much accurate to the exact percentage, we started to give a percentage complete. (28:30) Once we knew all the work that had to be done, as the work got done, we were able to share this strategic Amic initiative is 58% completed. (28:41) Was it entirely Amic accurate then?
(28:44) Maybe not exactly there, but it was close. (28:47) And it gave the stakeholders, I specifically remember someone in the marketing department telling me, you know what, Max, I look at this and I look exactly on a particular date, the date that we’re on, it’s January 17th. (29:03) And I come to this report and I see it’s a click to get to it, I see exactly where we’re at and I see that this strategic initiative or the business solution, it is almost done.
(29:18) So I don’t have to call the marketing agency that I contracted and paid already a down payment to tell them, oh, we might have to change the date. (29:28) No, or I can call them and say, I’d like to confirm the date that we had you starting to do the work for us on all the promotions that we have. (29:36) Because I know that we are on track, we are on track.
(29:40) I didn’t have to speak to a dev director. (29:42) I didn’t have to speak to a product manager and everything. (29:44) I could see the live status work and that we were close to being done, just as we had scheduled.
(29:52) And in some other scenarios, we are way off schedule. (29:55) So then all stakeholders can reset expectations with everybody that is out there. (30:02) That is a fundamental thing because people have to have an idea at any given time where you’re at.
(30:10) You have to be able to visualize your workflow. (30:15) And if you are not able to do this, you will never, or let me say, it will be very challenging to understand when you will be delivering value to the end user, to the customer, or if there’s anybody there. (30:34) It’ll be very challenging.
(30:36) Now I’ll pause because I need to drink something also. (30:41) Okay. (30:43) Steve, do we have any question?

Speaker 2
(30:46) Yeah, we’re seeing some questions here. (30:49) I think you’re hitting a nerve here, especially with the visualization of the work and making sure that all the stakeholders have visibility and looking into that work in and of itself. (31:01) I love what you were saying about the minute you have a static status report, it’s already out of date.
(31:07) I’m loving that. (31:09) The questions we’re getting are along the lines of tools, of course. (31:15) And I know that you’re trying to stay tool agnostic, as you mentioned at the beginning of our talk here today.
(31:21) A couple of us have thrown some things in the chat window, like whiteboards. (31:25) I’ve used Roadmunk. (31:26) Another question is, like Jira Align, if you have any experience with that.

Speaker 1
(31:34) Yes. (31:34) That works. (31:36) That works.
(31:37) Yes, we did. (31:38) And yes, that works. (31:40) In Jira, which is the tool that we did this, the case study for, I’m sorry, Steve, if I jumped in and interrupted you, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
(31:49) And so we used in Jira, a feature called Advanced Roadmap View. (31:58) And that is just a feature that connects. (32:01) It connects.
(32:02) And it shows it almost in a little bit of a Gantt chart view. (32:05) I had my problems with Gantt charts, but that was when they were manually created. (32:10) When they are created automatically, because the connections, because in every user story that you create, you have to assign the user story to an epic.
(32:20) Every epic that you create, it’s a mandatory field to assign that epic to a feature.(32:26) Every feature, like, you know, we don’t let people just create work items to do. (32:32) You have to actually say, I’m doing this work because it’s part of this other larger piece of work and it’s connected.
(32:38) So that in the tools, the connection shows. (32:42) And then, and then my friends, everything has the prioritization unique identifier. (32:49) If someone was working on something that is strategic initiative three, and we have strategic initiative one work in their backlog assigned to them, but they haven’t picked it up yet.
(33:02) We send an email to the product owner and the team lead and the scrum master.(33:08) And we say, hey, by the way, we’re not calling you out, but we’d like to understand why are you doing this? (33:13) Why are you not following and working on the highest priority item?
(33:19) Cause that is what has been deemed to be the highest customer value to start with.(33:25) Once everybody has the expectation, everybody from a tool perspective, again, I’m tool agnostic, but in this case, we use JIRA, okay, to do 70% of it. (33:36) And I’ve used a couple of different portfolio management tools, but JIRA is the main one for all the tool for the work and everything.
(33:43) And we connected the work all of a sudden, that was what I looked at every day.(33:49) I visualized the work through the advanced roadmap view, which showed me that white line is the day I’m on. (33:56) And I can see, I can see there is a key feature that we have to get done in a week and nobody has started any work on what’s happening.
(34:07) Oh, but we’re green on a program status update. (34:10) That doesn’t matter. (34:10) Cause that’s just a manual update.
(34:13) That green on that program status is just Bob that thought that this was green because he spoke to some developer and he marked it green. (34:22) Okay. (34:23) And I wasn’t talking about Bob here on the call.
(34:25) Okay. (34:25) I just said, Bob did that and it was wrong. (34:29) We have to see the real actual work.
Speaker 2
(34:32) I think we all get this. (34:35) And then I’m assuming that Max, that some of these things that, I don’t remember the JIRA pricing structure, all of these paid add-ons and things like that, I’m assuming.
Speaker 1
(34:46) Yeah. (34:46) Yes. (34:47) Well, when you add JIRA, the align and stuff like that, it is, it is.
(34:52) Why are you getting me into the tool so much, Steve?
Speaker 2
(34:55) There’s a lot of curiosity.
Speaker 1
(35:00) Everybody here, this presentation is tool agnostic, process agnostic. (35:06) I’ll talk about the process framework. (35:07) I have a little tip for everybody, but that’s agnostic to that.
(35:11) May I move on now? (35:13) As I move on, I’d like to bring the attention to the Keep Austin Agile Conference right here. (35:20) And there’s Michael Gardner that has the same virtual background.
(35:24) Okay. (35:24) If you sign up to come as a virtual person, like attendee, we’ll give you the same virtual background too. (35:33) Okay.
(35:34) It’s a hybrid conference in Austin, March 7th. (35:38) And the scope, the theme is agile growth mindset. (35:41) We’ve got to grow.
(35:43) 2023 is very competitive. (35:45) AI is a competitive landscape. (35:47) Globalization.
(35:48) How can we grow? (35:49) Okay. (35:50) And we’ve got phenomenal speakers that we’re just about to announce.
(35:54) Bob Galen’s our keynote speaker. (35:56) Ping me offline if you have any questions.(35:59) LinkedIn is what I respond to the most.
(36:03) So folks, last one. (36:07) Okay. (36:07) Measure.
(36:08) We’ve talked about prioritization. (36:10) We’ve talked about visualization. (36:13) And now it’s measuring.
(36:16) Measure. (36:16) First thing, when I say how to measure customer value, I might measure customer value in a certain way. (36:24) You are going to do it in a different way.
(36:27) So let me explain first what I’m talking about customer value. (36:31) I’m talking about measuring customer perceived value. (36:36) Has anybody ever been in that scenario where you deliver exactly what your product owner, product manager, business analyst, whomever it was that asked for the work, you deliver exactly what they asked for.
(36:52) And nobody uses it. (36:55) Or there’s all these bugs. (36:57) There’s like a hundred bugs.
(36:58) Oh, there’s a bug. (36:59) No, that’s not a bug. (37:00) This is how it was actually meant to be used according to the requirements.
(37:04) So in that case, you delivered. (37:07) And as I told that person at the company happy hour, it’s not, it’s good to deliver on time. (37:14) Don’t get me wrong.
(37:16) But that’s not what I focus on anymore. (37:18) I’ve got to deliver value. (37:20) I’ve got to help teams deliver value.
(37:23) So to me, customer value is customer perceived value. (37:27) It’s what the customer perceives the benefits are compared to the perceived cost. (37:33) If a customer or an end user has to stick around and play with the tool for five minutes and then gets a lot of value from it, that’s not good.
(37:42) If they do something in two seconds and they get value, that’s it. (37:51) Folks, that’s how we live now. (37:53) How many people here get products on Amazon, right?
(38:00) Everybody here. (38:01) I know that even if you don’t put your hand up, I know you do.(38:04) Yes, it is horrible what warehouse workers are going through and Amazon and everything.
(38:10) But when I click, not even twice now, they’ve brought it down to one click. (38:15) They’ve brought it down to one click, one click and a package is outside my door. (38:20) I perceive that to be extremely valuable to me.
(38:23) So it’s about perceived value. (38:26) It’s not about any metrics and stuff like that.(38:30) That can help.
(38:31) But how can you measure what I’m talking about, right? (38:35) So, I mean, OKRs are good. (38:38) OKRs, I’m really big fan of the OKRs.
(38:41) I think it’s really awesome that Hyperdrive connected with, is it scaled, right? (38:47) I mean, the company that was acquired? (38:51) Scaled OKRs.
(38:52) Scaled OKRs. (38:53) Thank you, Sherry. (38:54) I wanted to make the plug, but I want to be sure about it.
(38:57) I love OKRs and they help a lot, but I think we also need more, right? (39:04) Because you have to get that perceived value. (39:06) What I’ve seen works the best.
(39:10) You measure the usage of the product. (39:13) Measure the usage. (39:15) These days, I don’t even need to talk again with the product owner or as, or with the business folks and everything.
(39:22) Once we deploy something, we just monitor how many people are clicking on it.(39:27) That’s it. (39:28) That’s it.
(39:29) If we notice that there’s more usage than before, maybe we’re onto something.(39:35) Maybe they were just forced me to use it and so hence it did increase. (39:40) But if I see that they are not dropping off after five transactions, because before they would drop off at five and we decreased it to three clicks and we see that they are completing transactions, that is value.
(39:58) We have gotten so much better with all the monitoring tools to measure usage.(40:03) That is to me the best kind of, like an indicator of perceived value. (40:08) If people don’t use your software that much or they don’t complete the transaction or whatever it is, that is a signal.
(40:14) Doesn’t, I’m saying, it’s nice that you maybe got a promotion from the work you did.(40:18) It’s nice that those emails, you know, those emails that everybody sends, oh, we got this thing out and it was great and everybody replies all, replies all, replies all, great, great, great work. (40:28) And I think that those are great.
(40:31) But I just like these days to get a verification of actual customer perceived value.(40:37) And that connects to customer behavior. (40:40) We can actually monitor what people are doing on our tools.
(40:44) I’m talking very much from a software development perspective and that’s just what I have experienced. (40:49) I know that Agile is being used across a lot of other industries.(40:54) So I’m sorry if I’m focusing on actual delivering software products.
(41:01) And get more people to talk about customer perceived value. (41:06) The more you talk about it, the more ideas some people are gonna have. (41:10) And what I love about it, you don’t have to even contact somebody else to get all the feedback.
(41:17) You can actually monitor things yourself as a development team, as a product owner, having to work with the dev teams. (41:24) There’s so many tools out there. (41:25) It is ridiculous.
(41:26) We can see everything now, everything. (41:30) A case study, I actually have two.(41:36) There was once, and this happened back about four years back.
(41:42) We were delivering so many things. (41:45) Every quarter, every time. (41:47) We’re just every quarter, every month, every end of sprint, stuff like that.
(41:50) And it just felt that when we deliver, it just goes into a black hole. (41:54) It just goes into a black hole. (41:56) We just don’t hear about it anymore.
(41:57) And then there’s new work. (41:58) Like there’s no time to even think about what we delivered, how we did it. (42:02) And we’re confused about how to go on our site to do, I mean, the measurements and everything.
(42:07) I told someone from the business, hey, next time when we meet at the beginning of the quarter, and we were doing like kind of safe. (42:15) So the next time we have a PI, can you just start off with talking about actual data and trends about how we move the needle?(42:24) Just talk about it, right?
(42:26) Because at the very least, get people to talk about, this person showed up, gave data that we had never, and this was a director in the business side, spoke to all our engineering teams, gave data that we had never seen before, showed us how we had moved the needle in customer retention on the transactions, but it was data-driven and gave us a demo also.(42:53) Gave us a demo and showed us, because of what you did, because of the little integration that you did with the Google search on how to find an actual store in Canada and everything. (43:04) This is what we were able to do and connect that customer experience to everything else.
(43:09) It was just mind-blowing. (43:11) It was mind-blowing. (43:12) And this was something that people knew at that point, regardless what they did, it was like hundreds of people that worked on this functionality.
(43:21) They knew that what they did added value. (43:24) They knew it, okay? (43:26) And it was an extra oomph.
(43:28) It was an extra, let’s go out and do this, okay? (43:34) And another experience, and this is where it just, I still remember the look on the team’s face. (43:42) We were putting together particular software and stuff like that for agents that sold a lot of hardware and storage and all these things connected, like really high-end hardware sales.
(43:55) And we were just stumbling a lot of times, like we would put stuff out there and they didn’t use it, or we did stuff and we were seeing the tech sales folks were having problems.(44:06) So we just said, we told the product manager so many times we asked him about this and he refused. (44:12) We just want to go over to the next building and see what they’re doing, see how they use it.
(44:19) When we did that and we monitored how these tech sales folks were using our application, we noticed that they were not using 70% of it. (44:30) 70% of it. (44:31) They were not even using.
(44:33) The part that they were using, the 20 to 30%, they had to go from one screen to another screen to another. (44:40) And we asked them, we’re like, why do you have to do this? (44:42) Oh, because I have problem with authentication because this screen takes data from a different app and so I have to re-authenticate to get, and we were like, why didn’t anybody ever say this?
(44:56) Why did our product manager never mentioned it? (44:59) Because they were talking about the big features and stuff. (45:02) This person was working with four different screens.
(45:05) When we fixed this authentication issue, this person sent us sandwiches, sent us, I mean, he could have taken us out for lunch for how much we saved time on his schedule.(45:18) But that was like, it was a team of about seven to eight people. (45:22) He sent us sandwiches because to him, that value that we gave to him and that was just sitting down and just staring at what he’s doing for 10 minutes.
(45:30) And we’re like, why are you switching between screens? (45:34) Why are you doing that? (45:35) It’s like, and then you have so much of the functionality that was like all over the place.
(45:41) And we’re like, if you use mainly this 20 or 30%, we’ll put this at the top where you have, you won’t even have to scroll down. (45:47) You know, it was incredible. (45:49) But to do that, what you do now, you create a Zoom session with whomever you’re delivering this to, the sales, marketing, everything.
(45:57) You have to measure customer perceived value. (46:02) I know that completing story points is very important. (46:05) I know those burndown charts are very important and everything.
(46:09) I mean, OKRs are the best, I think in all the metrics that I’ve seen. (46:13) But I still say you need something more. (46:17) You need to measure customer perceived value.
(46:21) And folks, oh, sorry.

Speaker 3
(46:24) So you’re agreeing with me, right?

Speaker 1
(46:30) Amen. (46:32) Yeah. (46:34) Folks, as we get to like seven minutes left, I think it’s good that I start to wrap up, right?
(46:40) I don’t know if Steve has some closing statements or stuff. (46:43) We might be able to take one question. (46:45) I’m sorry.
(46:46) Like sometimes it’s good to have more questions and have an interactive, but I just wanna make sure everybody got the key points about you cascade the prioritized work.(46:57) And we explained and we talked about that. (47:00) You have to visualize the workflow.
(47:03) You have to visualize it. (47:04) Status reports, all these things. (47:08) Try to visualize your work, whatever you do it in whatever tool you do it, OK?
(47:14) And you have to measure value, specifically customer perceived value. (47:20) It is not enough to deliver now. (47:22) It is not enough to deliver because you as an organization, as a company might keep on doing just from like a delivery perspective.
(47:30) And some company, a startup from Singapore or something will come up with a better way to do your tool and measure customer perceived value. (47:38) And they will in like an iterative way increase their customer value exponentially because they have a focus on that, OK? (47:48) And do we have any other questions or anything out there or is it my time is up, Steve?
(47:56) Hi.

Speaker 2
(47:57) Yeah, we’re coming into the little conclusion here, but I just want to say plus one with that customer perceived value because it’s really not about the data necessarily. (48:08) It’s about the perception, the perception of the benefits outweighing the costs. (48:15) And like you were saying a couple of times, is it simple?
(48:18) Does it solve my problem? (48:21) You know, I think that’s absolutely essential. (48:24) You talked a lot about usage metrics, Max.
(48:28) What have been some other metrics really quickly that you’ve seen used out there, whether it’s NPS, to actually get into that customer satisfaction to kind of get a little bit more.

Speaker 1
(48:44) Yes. (48:45) I mean, NPS is great because it’s like an autonomous quick thing to do.(48:51) But to tell you the truth, a lot of customers do not fill that out.
(48:56) So sometimes, and there’s some times for monitoring the tools that you can get like an NPS score, you can generate one. (49:02) Yes. (49:03) But the most success I’ve had is when the customer doesn’t have any involvement on it, doesn’t have any involvement, doesn’t have to fill out a survey, doesn’t, you just monitor because it’s your software, it’s your application.
(49:17) You can monitor usage on it, okay? (49:20) Do not keep credit card information or whatever the case may be, but you can monitor the usage. (49:26) That is totally allowed, okay?
(49:28) Do that, do that. (49:30) I also loved how you- Everybody focus on that. (49:33) Have everybody focus on that, okay?
(49:35) Yes, you completed this and that’s great. (49:38) Two weeks after, three weeks after, show the data, show the data from the site. (49:43) And we hardly do that.

Speaker 2
(49:46) Yes. (49:48) And then you also had in there things like customer retention. (49:51) Those are things that you can monitor passively.
(49:53) You don’t have to get a survey with that as well. (49:56) There was a question that came in from Morgan. (49:58) Can you define the perceived value upfront still?
(50:02) Looks like you’re trying to define it after the launch.

Speaker 1
(50:05) Yes, you can try to do that. (50:09) Yes, a perfect example is we want to not have the customer go through five clicks. (50:15) We want them to go to just three clicks or even two if possible.
(50:19) That is a value to the customer. (50:21) The fewer clicks they have to do. (50:23) Yes, it’s a value.
(50:24) Now, you have to verify that because in going down to two or three clicks, you added some other scroll down, go sideways, other things that are like, oh, thanks a lot. (50:35) I’m lost now in your app. (50:37) But to the question of Morgan, yes, you can.
(50:42) And it’s very encouraged. (50:44) Well, we encourage people to do that. (50:46) It’s just you have to focus on doing it after you’ve done the work because then you will get that feedback and you will, as a true agilist, do like an intuitive approach to your product.
(51:03) You get feedback and you improve it.

Speaker 2
(51:05) And then just kind of in that spirit there, you know, kind of going out like to Eric Reese, you know, build, measure, learn, building the smallest thing possible and getting that feedback. (51:14) Do you use any focus groups or any customer advisory groups even before you get it out there as our final question for today?

Speaker 1
(51:25) I have done that once and I loved it. (51:29) I loved it. (51:30) I mean, not only to that question, the power of bringing your teams closer to the customer, it’s priceless.
(51:42) There’s something happens because then it connects it to a person. (51:46) It brings purpose in. (51:48) It brings like, you know, an extra oomph.
(51:51) They have a name of someone. (51:52) They’re like, boom. (51:54) I mean, if you can do that, expose the people that have to do the work to someone that’s going to use their products.
(52:01) And it could be an internal end user, not for say a customer only, someone in sales that has to sell your product. (52:07) If you can bring that upfront and bring that interaction, even though briefly, I’ve told some people do a recording. (52:15) There’s a reason why YouTube is one of the most popular sites, okay?
(52:20) The second most used site after Google. (52:22) I tell people in the business, do a quick kind of a recording on what you need this for and everything and send us a two minute clip and it’s connecting people. (52:31) It’s not just a story.
(52:33) It’s not just a feature in a tool. (52:35) It is actually someone speaking about like, this is what I do and how I’m like, and you didn’t have to schedule a meeting for that. (52:42) Just do a recording and send it over.

Speaker 2
(52:44) Absolutely.

Speaker 1
(52:45) Oh, I could talk for hours, however.

Speaker 2
(52:48) Oh, we got 15 seconds here, Max. (52:51) However.

Speaker 3
(52:52) I can stay later. (52:53) I can stay later, but we start on time. (52:56) We end on time, right?
(52:58) We can have an after hours, but we end on time officially.

Speaker 2
(53:02) Excellent. (53:02) Well, thank you so much, Max. (53:04) A lot of appreciation from the folks that are in the chat window here today.
(53:08) Again, you’ll see a recording coming out from my colleague Sherryann after this session here. (53:14) We also posted on the Hyperdrive resources page, usually within a couple days afterwards. (53:20) So once again, big thank you.
(53:22) Thank you so much, Max, for your content and your energy and your patience with the poll today. (53:28) Thank you everybody for being here. (53:31) We’re going to turn off the recording for now.