Agile Doesn’t Solve Problems — It Exposes Them

Wrapping up the year here are some of the things I’ve heard over the years:

1. We never say no to anything.

2. We build custom features for our biggest clients that none of our other customers know about.

3. We don’t know if what we are working on brings value, but they want us to just get sh** done.

4. We don’t have customers we are a data team.

Let’s take a look at these in more depth:

1. We never say no to anything — Never saying no is a sure sign that the organization doesn’t have any strategically aligned roadmap and has no way of quantifying what is valuable. This means that your technology teams are grinding through a non-stop set of work that will often be disconnected from other work, causing tech debt across the entire tech stack.

2. We build custom features for our biggest clients — Having worked in organizations that had this mindset, what this means is that you are putting yourself at risk as you are customizing and optimizing your product for a customer who could leave at any time (and in my experience, this is exactly what happened). By not having a strategic roadmap you are chasing short-term dollars over long-term profitability.

3. We don’t know if what we are working on brings value — Keeping people busy is not a replacement for delivering value. Output over outcomes means you are not realizing the benefits of your technology investment.

4. We don’t have customers we are a data team — I’ve heard this one in multiple organizations and it surprises me every time. Data by its nature is created by customers and your business operations. I get data is important, I started my career as a financial and forecasting analyst, so I know why we want data and how we can leverage it. But more and more it seems like companies are heavily investing in complex data lakes and supporting services architecture without understanding where the value proposition is. I hear companies say they need to become a data company that happens to do ‘x’. I think if you are a company with defined products and services, that is your business, not the underlying data generated from your business operations. If you can’t find a customer for your data efforts, then who exactly are you delivering this data to? Sure, you can sell it but that is a different business, and you should treat it as such.

Underlying all of these comments is a clear understanding that many companies don’t have a way to quantify value as a way of making informed investment decisions. Instead, technology is looked at from a demand perspective, we ask for it you do it. This mindset keeps us from treating technology as a strategic investment in the long-term wealth of the company.