3 Things First - The Formula of Product Delivery Success
Three Evidential Elements are crucial for any transformation to deliver better products faster. Understanding and implementing these three core elements of “The Formula of Evidential Elements of Agility” are essential for teams to achieve and sustain highly effective performance indefinitely. Here, we explore these elements and why they are critical for your Team’s journey towards agility.
1. Form Teams
What It Means: Forming a small (5-10 person), persistent, cross-functional, autonomous, self-managing Team with everyone and everything needed to flow work through a Sprint without external dependencies. The Team includes a Product Owner, a Scrum Master, and Developers, defined as anyone who produces any part of the Potentially Releasable Sprint Increment by the end of every Sprint.
Why It Matters: Proper Team formation ensures that no external dependencies delay or impede the continuous flow of work during a Sprint. Empowering Teams enables them to self-manage, communicate effectively, and speed up decision-making, allowing quicker value delivery.
Assessment:
Q: Does my Team have everyone and everything needed to flow work from “To Do” to “Done” to produce a Potentially Releasable Sprint Increment meeting Definition of Done every Sprint without delays or inputs from anyone or anything external to the Team?
2. Build Backlog
What It Means: The Product Backlog is the Product Goal and reflects the product's vision. It is a prioritized force-rank ordered list of work items (user stories, bugs, enablers) to meet the needs of the customer. For a Backlog to be effective, it must be transparent—each item should be well-defined, refined, visible, and understood by all team members—and prioritized according to the business value and Product Goal.
Why It Matters: An effectively managed Product Backlog ensures everyone knows what needs to be done and in what order. This clarity helps plan and execute Sprints more effectively, focusing the Team’s efforts on high-value functionality that directly contributes towards delivering the Product Goal. It also facilitates better people allocation and helps manage stakeholder expectations.
Assessment:
Q: Is your Product Backlog clearly defined and understood by all team members?
Q: How often do you review and prioritize your backlog, and are you confident it aligns with your business goals and customer needs?
Q: Do you find that your backlog items are completed within your sprints, or are there often carry-overs and incomplete work?
3. Working Tested Product
What It Means: By the end of each Sprint, the Team produces a working tested product increment that meets the agreed-upon Definition of Done (DoD). This increment should be potentially Releasable, meaning it’s of high enough quality in a releasable state to be released to customers in Production whenever the customer demands.
Why It’s Important: By building-in quality early in development and producing a working, tested, potentially releasable product increment, every Sprint demonstrates tangible progress available for customers to use in a Product-like environment (e.g. Stage) and provides feedback demonstrating if the product meets their needs. It allows teams to validate ideas quickly, adjust plans based on honest user feedback, reduces rework, and reduces risks associated with big-bang releases.
Assessment:
Q: Can your team consistently deliver a working, fully tested, potentially releasable increment of the product at the end of every Sprint?
Q: Do you have the highest confidence in the quality of the software your team produces every Sprint? Is it truly defect-free, or are there recurring issues that need addressed?
Q: How effectively does your team handle bugs and defects during Sprints?
Q: Are you able to maintain product quality without compromising delivery timelines?
Implementing The 3 Things First
Adopting these three core preconditions, non-negotiables, and prerequisites transforms how teams approach product development, shifting from siloed team members to more dynamic, integrated, and adaptive processes. Focusing on these three elements first provides a solid foundation for scaling practices across teams and departments.
If we can’t form stable, persistent teams without dependencies, establish a transparent and well-articulated backlog in Jira, perform a build quickly, release frequently and fast when demanded, and produce tangible progress every Sprint of fully working tested product, then fix these three things first.
Our commitment to these guiding principles reflects our dedication to delivering superior products and services, enhancing team collaboration, and driving innovation. By steadfastly adhering to these 3 things, we meet and exceed our customers’ expectations, ensuring our place as a leader in our industry.