6 times Agile brought value to our clients (and us)
We’ve been banging on about the value of agility and specifically Scrum for a while. There’s no change there; it’s still useful. But you need real examples, don’t you? Well, we’ve got some for you.
Keep one thing in mind:
Good software houses make money by bringing value to clients.
It’s not about being cheaper per hour — it’s about delivering more of what makes the client money by becoming focused, responsive, efficient, and value-oriented.
So, let’s have some examples from practice. 6 Specific times Agile brought value to our clients (and us):
01.
When four people are the Scrum Master (nobody is)
A client didn’t want to invest in a full-time in-house Scrum Master. So either there was no Scrum Master, or various people took over for a while. Always someone different for a meeting or two, never for long enough for the real leadership to emerge.
The result: nobody wanted to do it. Changing hats mid-day chipped away at the precious time they wished to spend elsewhere. There was zero focus as the SM’s job was never done properly (who would’ve guessed).
Our solution: we provided our own Scrum Master. By not being an in-house employee, the client only paid for their time present, usually a few dozen hours per week — saving money. Plus, the team got the leadership, structure, and focus they needed to start thriving.
Focus restored, burden removed.
02.
Doing Scrum for Scrum’s sake (don’t!)
In one of our projects, we were helping a client’s internal team. When we jumped in, they had already been doing Scrum. Sprint reviews, retrospectives, daily scrums, what’s not to love?
But something was off.
The client knew what to do but not WHY. A consultant had given them a checklist, which they followed in hopes of improving their workflow. Yes, that happens sometimes. Close your mouth.
Our solution: In this case, Scrum was the right approach, but the client needed to know why.
We did a small workshop with their PMs and developers to explain the value and mindset behind ceremonies, artifacts, etc. We could draw on precise examples from what we were all building.
We don’t need to tell you that things improved once we all started embracing the actual agile mindset instead of following ceremonies blindly.
03.
Give us something quickly! Or we’ll pull the plug
This is a situation when Scrum saved a project from impending doom.
A client’s software was stuck. There were no updates anymore, and the whole thing was on life support. They had had to fire the whole team who worked on it previously.
What’s worse, a key stakeholder threatened to stop their funding.
The client refused to give up and asked us to continue with development. The situation was dire.
We decided to kill two birds with one stone. We started untangling the heap of issues, dependencies, and bad habits iteratively, one by one. Soon enough, the project started moving in the right direction. The snowball started piling up.
The stakeholders noticed that something was indeed happening (thanks to the biweekly sprint reviews 😉). They were reassured, and our client could keep relying on their funding. Scrum saved the day!
04.
Making the environment Agile-friendly
To be able to consistently bring agility, effectiveness, and responsiveness to various clients, you need to give it proper breeding grounds.
Ours is called the PM club! (It would’ve been a Chapter if Spotify had made it). It brings focused learning, professional development, cross-pollination, knowledge exchange, and mentoring. We do it with regular activities (PM workshops, certifications, coaching sessions, and a common newsletter).
We’ve basically created a community of practice within Panaxeo. They help each other, provide more pairs of eyes, share experiences, and exchange tools. Through some good old regular focused learning, they all grow together.
05.
Scrum is not only for PMs
Now, hold up! With the previous point in mind, let’s not forget the devs!
Developers trained in Scrum are a godsend. They are the ones in the trenches after all.
We’ve been getting Scrum certified like crazy (the devs too). The benefits according to our clients:
Devs trained in Scrum can teach the Product Owner (often a person on the client’s side) why some approaches make more sense than others.
They understand the value of working as a team toward a common goal while living the values of respect, courage, openness, commitment, and focus.
They can detect and seize opportunities for improving the system as a whole — whether it is TDD, CI/CD, management of technical debt, or increased transparency into usage data, enabling validation.
So, train your developers in Scrum!
06.
Let’s not forget ourselves!
Helping our clients reap the value of agility and increased predictability with Scrum is fine and dandy. However, we soon realized we’d need some of that ourselves.
Panaxeo was growing. Great!
But our CEOs, Igor and Adam, feared they’d become the bottlenecks. Not great. 😢
Therefore, we cracked our knuckles and took precautions.
We sliced the company vertically into nimble and efficient portfolios.
We empowered the managers in charge of those portfolios.
We upped the autonomy of Project Managers, Scrum Masters, and the teams themselves.
Key outcomes:
High responsiveness to the needs of our clients and colleagues. Decisions are made lightning-fast by people who know the most about the issue.
Everyone knows who they are creating value for, enabling more effective decisions.
Bonus: no icky all-covering standardization.
Conclusion
The next time you see somebody complain that Agile is nice only on paper, send them this article.
When Agile is being lived instead of merely “done”, it can be a great catalyst of value, prevent disasters, and save (better yet, make) tons of money. Next time you see somebody complain that Agile is nice only on paper, send them this article.
When Agile is being lived instead of merely “done”, it can be a great catalyst of value, prevent disasters, and save (better yet, make) tons of money.
