Five key outcomes for any lean agile organization are identified: 1. Customer satisfaction 2. Ensuring the product meets customer and business needs rather than just requirements 3. Timely deliveries 4. Quality 5. Motivated teams Motivated teams is emphasized as the most undervalued of these outcomes. The document elaborates further on each outcome and why they are important, particularly focusing on truly understanding customer needs, enabling frequent feedback through timely deliveries, co-locating teams to improve quality, and building trust to motivate teams. It suggests these outcomes should be priorities for any organization, not just lean agile ones.

1. Five Crucial Outcomes of ANY Lean Agile
Organization
What outcomes do really matter for a lean agile organization?
1. Customer Satisfaction
2. Is the Product meeting the Customer & Business Need (vs. Requirements)?
3. Timely Deliveries
4. Quality
5. Motivated Teams
While the low level metrics are important, the above mentioned Outcomes are the ones that
we should focus most on.
Why is “Motivated Teams” in italic above? Since that is the most undervalued,
unfortunately.
A provoking thought:
We pay so much attention to these outcomes in a lean agile organization.
Shouldn’t they be used in ANY organization?

2. ——- Interested in some elaboration of the points? ——
1. Customer Satisfaction: This is the most important outcome, since it impacts the
growth of the company the most. We need them to stay with us to survive. If we do
not satisfy them, someone else will.
o External Customer — We need to take care of their whole
experience…right from pre-sales to after-sales support. The value they
get vs. the price they pay, is also important here.
o Internal Customer – Get them involved in your creation process (inputs,
feedback, etc.), since they will consume our product.
2. Is the Product meeting the Customer & Business Need (vs. Requirements)?
o Customer Need – The most common misconception is – “we have fully
understood what the customer needs”.
▪ Many times, the customer himself is not sure what he needs,
though he may give his wants to us. The need is an appropriate
high level solution to his Problem Statement, and so we should
begin with what his Problem Statement is.
▪ The wants are what he is telling us, and it could be different from
the need because of how he expresses it, how we interpret it,
assumptions, etc.
o Business Need is what our own organization needs in the long run…the
Product Road Map, the Business Strategy, etc. A product company cannot
meet all the requests from all clients, and has to take tough calls on what
will help their product and what will not. It can of course take care of specific
customization, but being mindful of how they will consume our product
upgrades.
3. Timely Deliveries: This is often under serious threat, due to the inherent
unpredictable nature of software development. It is generally wiser to be mindful of
this unpredictability, and commit to the customer accordingly, especially the external
customer. If the customer is ready to consume our software frequently, it is better to
play with the scope during difficult times, rather than the date. Also, in cases where
the date is sacrosanct, the scope is the best factor to play with, unless the only
option left is to alter the cost (should generally not happen at the very end). Make
frequent deliveries from the team, even if it is only to the internal customers.
Frequent deliveries will force a culture of finishing the features rather than starting
too many, and will also enable frequent feedback. Frequent feedback is actually a
big reason that the truly agile projects (not the ones on paper) are far more
successful.

3. 4. Quality: A factor that should actually be a habit, is many times a result of late
corrections, and thus is given a big push in agile projects. Quality is enabled better
by co-location and a small self-organized team, having face to face conversations.
An extremely dangerous myth that we need to stay away from is that “agile
projects do not need testing experts”.
5. Motivated Teams: This unfortunately was not a very important factor in the
traditional days. Agile organizations (true ones) are paying a Lot of attention to it,
and helps not only in retention, but also in getting far better products and far better
outcomes in every sense. The biggest challenge to achieving this has been the
Trust, unfortunately.