Pattern: Agile for New Development
Balance proficiency and innovation by building a separate time for each into your development cycle
Strategy is defined and solution direction is chosen after experimentation. There are still many uncertainties and not all knowledge is available within the team.
In This Context
Teams are either endlessly researching and collecting information or, conversely,starting to deliver and optimize very early. In the first case, value is delivered to customers late, ends up being of poor quality, or never gets delivered at all. In the . second case, the solutions are too simple and underdeveloped and miss the opportunity to solve customer problems.
- Many processes aiming to increase productivity attempt to do so by pushing out innovation.
- Radical innovation and proficient delivery can’t be done in the same way.
- Innovation without delivery is academic research.
- Delivery without innovation is blind to market changes.
Therefore
Run alternating iterations of research and development.Spend about 20%–30% of the time running proof-of-concept experiments and other research activities. Use the rest of the time to implement the discovered solutions and increase the quality.
- Every third or fourth sprint in Scrum should be used for research.
- 20%–30% of Kanban backlog should be dedicated to innovation and improvement tasks.
- When a solution is not clear, use experiments or PoCs to discover and eliminate options.
Consequently
Delivery and innovation are separate and in balance.
- Team can still change product direction relatively easily.
- Quality of the products constantly increases.
- One-third of the time is not immediately monetized.
