On Medium: You know what Agency Clients love? Certainty.

The article—posted to my Medium account—reflects on the challenges that Agile-first agencies face when they acquire new clients who often have a preference for traditional, Waterfall project management.

When we’re accustomed to agility and flexibility, we must adapt to provide the certainty and structured approach desired by a new client, balancing the innate human need for both certainty and excitement.

This adaptation involves documenting a delivery approach and being less agile about Agile.

But does changing our approach mean we’re no longer Agile?

Read ‘You know what Agency Clients love? Certainty.’ on Medium.

Less-Aligned Stakeholders: How to Carve Out Success

Once your client induction process is complete, you’ll need to make a decision on whether their next project has a key stakeholder that’s going to be high-impact. With those two key stages in the bank, it’s time to evalute the best way to move forward.

The options below are not intended to be a definitive list. Indeed I can imagine a rewrite of this article or addition of other options in the future. What you will be able to take from reading these thoughts however is the number of ways you could move forward (or not) with a client who isn’t ready to—or won’t—consider your purely Agile delivery approach.

Right, let’s dive into some less-Agile options!

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Semi-retirement done. Reboot complete.

At the beginning of October last year I wrong a blog post called ‘Retirement Diary – Week One‘. As you can probably infer from the title alone my intention was for it to be the first in a series. I was planning to document what taking a step back from work looked and felt like for me. I hoped it would both allow me to return and review the experience at a later date, but also that there might be some insights I could share which would be helpful for others.

It quickly became clear however that I wasn’t actually done with work, or the impact working too much in 2022 and 2023 had on me.

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Client expectations of the inspect and adapt process

Let’s compare a sports situation with software dev best practice. There was recently a huge failure in the refereeing of a football match. A decision was made that processes should have corrected. Gary Neville here is saying refereeing is difficult & sorry should be enough here. https://t.co/NN6tvZzW0X
— Harry Bailey (@HarryBailey) October 3, 2023

In software development we do ‘inspect and adapt’. That is we look at our processes and find ways to improve. We’re transparent about failure and actively look for places we can evolve.
— Harry Bailey (@HarryBailey) October 3, 2023

A ‘sorry but’ wouldn’t be acceptable. “Oh there is a demand for speed so we’ll fail occasionally” and “that’s just the way it is”
— Harry Bailey (@HarryBailey) October 3, 2023

The least we’d offer is…
Sorry
Here is why it failed
Here is what we’ve done to improve the situation
— Harry Bailey (@HarryBailey) October 3, 2023

When you don’t offer those things, people (clients or stakeholders) will go looking for the improvement / failure themselves
— Harry Bailey (@HarryBailey) October 3, 2023

And that is exactly what has happened with the football VAR failure. Where no change is promised, a change is demanded. It’s a valid ask, and a basic expectation of the consumer of any service. Here that’s refereeing.
— Harry Bailey (@HarryBailey) October 3, 2023

Offboarding as a priority

There is nothing quite like the heart sinking feeling other team members get when a developer announces they’ll be leaving a small team.

Mild panic sets in, and everybody looks to each other for reassurance. Yet that moment is the right time to switch mindsets to focused offboarding. Ensuring the remaining members are left in the best state possible to continue their great work.

Team size is critical here. One developer leaving a team of five often has a huge impact relative to a developer leaving a team of 20. Small teams need to run offboarding in a way that acknowledges this size frailty and mitigates the short and long term risks associated with developer churn.

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