Why Customer Collaboration is Painful? How can we improve?

James is an Agile Coach. He has picked up his current assignment for Agile Transformation for large product development.

One of his observations was business or customer was no way involved in product solutions development.

They were far from the product development teams.

Team members were tried to invite the business and customers to share their insight with the PO, but the PO was not accessible most of the time.

Business does not find any value to involve themselves with IT on the solution side. They want results!

IT is an expert in building IT solutions and the Business wants to keep themselves aways for all these discussions.

Team members were not able to appreciate what they are developing and how those solutions will be consumed by the end-users. They were struggling to visualize the end-users’ usages of the systems.

Team members discover issues later the course of the development proceeding in feature delivery flow.

In today’s digital era, we have to build the first time right product as often as feasible. When the customer has been involved in co-creating the end solution, it is very much likely we may succeed in this approach.

James had an incredibly challenging assignment as an Agile coach to address this issue. How to enhance customer engagement?

One of the Agile Values says,

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

One of the principles says

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

Now, where are the business involvement? How to expand?

After several months of close scrutiny, James discovers there are many impediments in the organization which is not supporting the customer to come to close to the IT organizations.

One of the blockers is Organizational structure.

IT and Business are 2 building blocks.

One invests money to build products, and another builds the products.

As everyone needs capital to exist, IT always seeking funds.

So Businesses, as they are generating revenues, are invariably in upper controls. There is always conflict and wrestling.

In the end, who has money they dominate in the argument! else fund will go somewhere else! Nobody dares to pinpoint such an issue which is slowing down the organization.

There are many people who are playing the interface role. There are many roles created to complete these jobs. All these roles are a very senior role, and their everyday activities involve managing the same. Both of the IT side and the Business side. They are gatekeepers, enablers, and messengers from both sides of the wall in the product development flow!

Those employees are feeding the business organization. The business is pretty comfortable with these jobs. As they are not directly involved and information is also fed to them. They were protecting each other and defending each other roles.

87 percent of organizations agree on traditional experiences no longer satisfy customers. (Source: Accenture)

86 percent of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or inadequate communication for workplace failures (Source: Salesforce)

James had an arduous task to break, these communication barriers, and establish a strong agile team by dismantling these barriers need to find out. He involves a third-party consultant to undertake this assignment.

He & the consultant did a value stream mapping workshop to understand the execution speed. And figure out where most of the time consumed. He had found that as too many layers are involved in between development teams and business stakeholders, the time taking is remarkably significant.

The new team of Change agents has recommended a new lean organization. The layers in between, people/roles in between have been optimized. Team members should be able to access direct customers with minimal layers and communication barriers.

Initially, customer representatives(Business) were not comfortable with these new ways of working. There were many unknown initially. But with an appropriate workshop and hand-holding, they started feeling comfortable. There was a lot of top pressure as the Business people were not enthusiastic to participate in such events. For a substantial period of their career, they were not done with such work. They are more comfortable with domain work. They would love to continue to play the role of end-users of the IT system. They feel lost when we talk about IT jargon.

Earlier model customer representatives are in the upper hand. They were the receiver of the solution. In that model, it was natural to get into conflict and blame mode. Team members used to waste a lot of time in mail exchange, in meeting to demonstrate who is right. As customers used to pay money, they used to dictate the discussion. This creates disappointment, dissatisfaction at the team level. Their KPI was different. By collaborating with the IT product development team, they were not getting many benefits. All these aspects had to alter with the new model.

Leadership was not convinced for long to let their business people involve IT solutions building. After several rounds of benefits realization discussion, these factors are obvious that at a certain % of their involvement to start with and incrementally we can expand based on the demand. The pilot approach demonstrated the issue of discovery at a subsequent period has reduced with this fresh approach. This leadership is again convinced that it is workable and value-added. Once leaders are agreeing, it considers much natural to coach the business team members to collaborate with IT.

The change management team has submitted to optimize some of these roles and direct, in small size connectivity with the development team members. E.g. the Earlier model, many large size flow of requirements were handled by the many business representatives. Now Few large size flow of requirements were managed by a few business representatives. It was comfortable for business people to deal with volumes and sizes. It was easy for the development team members to instantaneously access the business.

New roles and responsibilities for this new structure has been clearly defined. There were autonomy and commitment improved among team members for this new structure. With the help of the agile scrum model team members are able to rapidly minimize the risk and demonstrate the progress.

Various automated tools have been used to establish there is complete transparency of product development flow. Product team members are able to clearly view the bottleneck and eliminate rapidly. Business stakeholders were are having concerns if they have to spend more time with IT or not. But with the right structure and eliminating ambiguity through tools, everything is unusually apparent. Who is going to do what, by when? The frequent synch has have diminished any such issues.

Scrum team members are a coach to accept, support, and welcome the business team members. They were encouraged to inspire the business team member’s participation in the initial days. They handhold the business respectively for initial days. The redundant roles were coming in the middle layers of the development flow e.g proxy roles, interface roles either they have been moved to the business side or in other teams similar business side roles.

Rewards and recognized as a whole team. The complete teams win when they were able to build features at every sprint level. The entire chain of product development is celebrating success and taking the blame for failure. The measurement indicates the improvement team is making, The satisfaction index has progressively raised to substantiate this new model.

It took James and his team to optimize the structure and improved the customer engagement for 6 months to one years with many activities, discussion, workshop and pilot, etc work.

The top leaders’ blessing and good change agents were key in this drive.

There was considerable value, speed improvement has been observed in these unique ways of working.

Organization Change Operation for a Fresh Drive?

My friend recently joins an organization as a Change Lead! New Position different office and unique change manager!
We were informally reviewing what are the factors we should study out and how can we set ourselves for success.
He takes up an assignment to know further about his new organization, to understand further about them so that he can position himself better.

He was a part of the team which is performing satisfactory, it seems. My friend wants to know the stuff “as it is”, so that he can perform the desirable change management proposal. To function better in the organization he has to recognize the as-is state of the team culture & Organization culture.

What he was using is called “The Cultural Web”, which identifies six connected elements that help to make up what Johnson and Scholes call the “paradigm”–the pattern or model–of the work environment.

I was not cognizant about this model, but when he was explaining, I felt wow, that is how it can help individuals to set themselves initially in a structural way which is a marvelous approach.

What precisely are all these factors to look upon?

1. Stories and Myths: Lookout all the previous and current stories going on within the organization about the organization? Note down all these points without analyzing anything. Just collect as initial days. More is better. Through these incidents try to capture organization values, beliefs, etc, and why with how part.
Collect & Write about 20 pages on these stories & Myths. It will provide remarkably valuable insight.

2. Rituals and Routines: Observe and Collect daily actions and behaviors of individuals within the organization. Participate in numerous informal and formal meetings and note down different levels of discussion, roles in how people behave, exchange, and exhibits.
3. Symbols: The visual representation of the company; how they show up to both employees and individuals on the outside. It includes logos, office spaces, dress codes, and sometimes advertisements. How the organization and team feel about the symbols, logos, and colors.

4. Control Systems: Collect all the points through which the organization is getting controlled? The quality system, customer base, products, cash flow, etc how all these elements control the whole organization or different teams. These give valuable insights into the organization flow. How about the teams, team members getting punished, or recognized by whom for what? etc

5. Organisation Structures: Read out the prevailing organization structure. Unwritten power and influence that some members may exert, which likewise indicates whose contributions to the organization are most appreciated by those above them. Where the power centers, why, and how those influence the numerous decision making.
6. Power Structures: Note who are the individuals, are those who hold the strongest influence over decisions and commonly have the ultimate say on significant actions or changes.

Now he has gathered all the intelligence, So what?
As he is a Change agent into the new ambient, by integrating this system of analysis, he can identify himself and will be adequate to break free of ritual and belief systems within a company to achieve real change and innovation.

Whenever there is a fresh initiative that can start we need to address most of these below areas. The below areas are vital as this is how organizations operate. This is what culture is about.

For example, there is an initiative from Projectized organization, we have to move to the Productized organization. This is a new change organization that is willing to bring in to overcome some of the anti agile practices and raise the business agility in the delivery team.

1. Stories and Myths: What are the numerous challenges “projects based” approach experiences, What new stories we can bring into? How can rewrite some of the old stories with a new productized concept? Internally and externally what are the new development due to productized approaches can bring into.

2. Rituals and Routines: The projects based funding, execution, etc, what are numerous routine is going to transform when we move into the productized approach? What the platform we have which can communicate these changes in ritual and routine, explains betters. Who are the individuals who are responsible to bring those changes in rituals and routines?

3. Symbols: What are the new colors, logo for in product-based approach will look like. How do we advertise and brand within the team environment? The change from Project to product approach should have an original look feel and transmit some clear message.

4. Control Systems: What is the formal and informal approach to the new change. The pilot of the productized approach in a certain team, how the progress will be presented by whom etc information needs to be presented. How the decision will be taken and by whom need to highlight.

5. Organisation Structures: What will be the structure of the productization initiatives. Who are the core team members and who will make the pivotal decisions? A formal and information structure of the team members serving to fulfill some of the activities.

6. Power Structures: Who are the investors in this productization drive. How success will look like. Who drives through this approach?
This provides a structural thought process on how to roll out the change management plan for an initiative where success will be high as we are aligning with the organizational cultures.

All these aspects need to look into when we introduce fresh changes to the organization.

In this procedure, we are also taking care of the present organizational culture.

As the cultural paradigm influences and is influenced by the six inter-relating factors of the model, each aspect should be considered in terms of mapping out and designing the necessary changes (Johnson et al, 2011).

Understanding the dominant culture permits consideration of whether or not change can be accommodated within the culture of any given labor ward. Alternatively, if this is not possible, a shift in culture is definitely required (Johnson et al, 2011).

It also allows identification of what is problematic about the existing culture, indicating the type of change required and highlights aspects of culture that act as facilitators or block change (Johnson et al, 2011).

We all can try this? see how this approach enables us to become better whatever we are working on.....

How do we engage Product Owners or business owners at scrum events?

Most of the team members complain that their Product Owners and diverse business stakeholders are not actively partcipating in various scrum events.

They always ask for status information at the end of some intermission.

They are illiterate about the challenges team members are facing.

They are consistently seeking solutions, not interested to identify the team challenges, They invariably indicate that they are extremely busy and no time for such an arrangement.

It is crucial that we should co-create the solution with the Business. But business is not concerned to work out on such a thing. It is a challenge that every scrum team facing.

What will happen to such scrum team where Business stakeholders are not at all involved!

The team needs to demonstrate the benefits PO and Business owners will receive by investing time and effort. How PO & Business stakeholders will gain visibility, benefits due to scrum events participation. They should feel psychologically safe as IT is sometimes foreign to them. The team needs to onboard them with comfort. “Handle with care!”

We have few rules to adhere to which has established the sign of PO & Business stakeholders’ engagement gradually.
The facilitator has to steadily pursue this practice to be adhered to for some moment.
Rules of engagement do not have to be lengthy, but they must fit into team members or extender team members and be welcomed by all the team members.
Ensure PO/business stakeholders feel significant and relevant to the team’s needs.
Acknowledge their contribution and time spend on the team.
All product owners or business owners must participate in most of the scrum events( Convey repeatedly to them).
They must be shown an enthusiastic interest in what is going on with the project team. Try to establish that curiosity in their minds by doing some activities.
Ensure they have reviewed and contributed to the product development journey.
In the project learning session, PO/BO engagement challenges and progress need to examine. Come out with action points.
Every team member identifies points that can strengthen the Product Owner and business stakeholders’ engagement.
Each team members need to demonstrate that they do care about their PO and business stakeholders’ participants.
Have fun in the Scrum events, let us not merely talk business but some other topics also require to discuss. Plan such topics as a part of the discussion.
Respects their time. Facilitate well so that in minimal time, everyone can get maximum output.
Exercise all the tools to build transparency and visibility & Challenges etc information captured well.
Share your views and concerns in the room. Show each other courage and respect by including the tough conversations that require to be had immediately.
Ask better and thought-provoking questions. Ensure you have performed better home works and you have all the data to reinforce your conversation.
Be a good listener and empathize with the business stakeholders.
Manage negative feedback effectively. Sometimes, the team may get negative feedback from annoyed business stakeholders.
Demonstrated as a team, your dedication, commitment, and ownership always to business stakeholders
Do not attack, people, address the underlying process for improvement.

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. - Helen Keller