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I have spent long enough in ICT to have been involved with development, witnessed sales promises with good and less good delivery. Getting it wrong can be down to a lot of possible factors, which most of us have historically experienced.
These include over-ambitious sales, lack of good specification definition, poor overall understanding and setting of expectations, incorrect estimates of effort required from the development teams, or perhaps sloppy communications across staff or remote development teams. This last one is very interesting and can also be cultural too, particularly where software development is offshored. While teams often share a common language (English and technical programming languages and technologies), culturally often they could be far from similar.
Offshoring can work very well although often good managers need to be embedded, or local attitudes need taking into account. For example while Vietnamese developers are quite blunt and black & white at times in attitude, Indian based staff can be too optimistic and positive, often ‘to save face’. I’m a massive fan of the sub-continent, but often experienced the same in its four corners when traveling extensively there. These misunderstandings no doubt affect deadlines and lead to incorrect, somewhat de-scoped or lightweight solutions being finally delivered.
Over the last 2-3 years increasingly we hear our suppliers telling us they are utilising agile methodologies and sprints, as this should be a possible thing. If we are trying to catch a train or bus and running late, we ‘sprint’. How could we not think that a methodology like this could not get us our upgrades, enhancements, patches or bug fixes much faster?
Of course, when we ‘sprint’, now and again we drop our umbrella or leave something behind, occasionally making us regret that we rushed at all. Equally, how often were you promised that your supplier was tackling your change in the ‘next sprint’ and you find a month later, after gearing up your project accordingly, that, “Oh sorry it missed that sprint”!
The whole methodology of sprints even brings its own terminology for failure. In one meeting I attended, a development manager stated that 40% of the next sprint was being used to address known “technical debt”. A hapless housing finance manager asked if this would be adding more features around technical rent arrears. I had the unfortunate task to explain the developers were just spending 40% of their resource on what they failed to finish in the last few sprints. Fixation with short & soon deadlines, does lead to various failures as often “we didn’t have enough time”.
Only a few things can practically be done if heading for the end of sprint deadline. Cut corners including features and quality. Force or coerce staff into working (more) overtime. Cut out other activities, such as mentoring or training. So not brilliant for staff (or customers further down the line).
While Kanban dispenses with the time boxed concept of ‘The Sprint’, we will clearly still be hearing much of it for some time ahead. As one client of mine remarked the other week, “failure of the sprint”, is the latest excuse they always heard these days, as whatever they were relying on, was never delivered on time. Clearly, better setting of expectations by management & sales/account management would do much to improve customer service in many areas.
If there is one principle I have taken on board over the years, its to always try to under promise, then over deliver. That’s what people actually remember.
Have you been the wrong end of a supplier sprint and had to explain to your management why your system improvements & transformation will be another three months or more away? You have my commiserations!
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(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009
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