Delivering Value?

DESK. 1 MEETING ROOM – 8 A.M.

The team is gathered in a daily project meeting. While enjoying their drinks, they discuss some specific issues. When it’s time for the Product Owner to speak, he says:

PRODUCT OWNER

(Imposing)

We are going to do everything we can to make sure that no recommendations come out from the users.

Everyone nods.

In other words, they are in a phase where they are going to deliver a product, but they don’t want users to give their recommendations and if they do, they are not going to pay attention to them, that is to say, they are not going to pay attention if they didn’t like it? Well, yes, and although this scene looks like fiction, it is not.

The truth is that I still can’t get over it.

This, seen from any point of view, goes against everything that makes up an agile model, because this position is far from focusing on the customer and creating products that really generate value. No matter what kind of product it is, it could even be toys, but if children are not going to find value in them, what is the point?

It seems incredible to me that at this point we are still thinking in such a «Taylorian» way, that the important thing is to minimize cost over anything else, without generating value, without getting closer to the users. This type of thinking has long since reached its final phase, we have been thinking about new ways of doing things that will help us to be more assertive, more agile, always keeping in mind what really matters: the user.

One thing I will always do is to invite you to think about what the user needs, we don’t know what it is, so let’s ask them, let’s deliver increases of value on which they can give us feedback and thus be able to find what they really want and will use comfortably.

Has something similar happened to you? How have you solved it?

The cover image was taken from Background vector created by freepik – www.freepik.com

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