If a baker wants to double the number of carrot cakes he can produce in a week, he has two options:
- Hire another baker
- Optimize the recipe
The first option means the added cost of a full-time employee in addition to the time (and thus money) spent training the new baker on precisely how the shop makes carrot cake: number of carrots, coconut flakes or shredded, sifting the flour, etc.
The second option is the most cost effective. Perhaps he switches to using an electric mixer instead of manually mixing the batter. By optimizing his process, the baker can increase production without adding cost. He can literally have his cake and eat it too!
Agile is much like the second option in that once you get really good at Agile, you can build quality software better and faster, thus increasing your team’s productivity, or deliver double value in less time.
I know it’s hard to believe but I wasn’t always the Agilist you see today. I made rookie mistakes too. Check out the video and hear about the time not getting to “done-done” doubled the time it took for me and my team to deploy.
Deliver Double Value in Half the Time – Video
One of the great things about Agile is the ability for teams to quickly learn from their mistakes. Because of that experience, I understood that adding a hardening sprint to fix bugs doubled the time to deploy. We learned that taking time to test and fix bugs within every sprint ultimately meant deploying 8 weeks earlier. What gives your company more value–5 more features or faster time to market?
If we had released 8 weeks earlier, we could have used the time to fix issues to…
- Make money
- Gather user feedback for the second release
- Deliver more features in the second release
Remember, there’s no partial credit in Agile. Become disciplined and get your team to “done-done” and you’ll see a big difference in productivity.