Empathy Driven Development: Rescuing Value from the Bermuda Triangle of Waste

1© SmoothApps 2015 All rights reserved. www.smoothapps.com
EMPATHY DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT
RESCUE VALUE FROM THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE OF SOFTWARE DELIVERY!

2© 1993-2014 Scrum.org, All Rights Reserved
About Me…
• Education:
 Bachelors in Computer Sc. & Engg.
 Masters in Entrepreneurship
• Certifications:
 PST (PSF, PSM, PSPO), PSE, PSM II, PSPO II, PSD I
 Evidence Based Management Consultant
 MBTI Certified Practitioner
 Certified in Advanced Conflict Resolution
 Certificate in Organizational Development
• Experience:
 Sr. Principal – Enterprise Agile Deployment, Sabre
 Founder & Org Whisperer – SmoothApps
 16+ years in SW Delivery, Consulting
 Siemens, HP, Avaya, Cisco, AT&T. among others
 Dev Background: C/C++, VC++, Win32 SDK, Oracle…

•Relentless focus on
• Maximizing output - VELOCITY
• Minimizing cost - $ FOR SCRUM TEAMS
• Minimizing time - # OF SPRINTS
Challenge For Our Industry…

Challenge For Our Industry…
•Value disappearing into…
Cost of Scrum Teams
Staff

Cost Thinking vs Value Thinking
Let’s STOP getting more
efficient @ delivering this
& START getting
effective @ delivering this

•Any examples from your experience…?
•Success stories / tips…?
COST THINKING vs VALUE THINKING

Impediment
?
•But what blocks our teams…?

A Common Impediment
?
•But what blocks our teams…?

What Is Empathy…?

Current State
• How empathetic is your team towards …?
• SPONSORS: Fund the Scrum Team
• END USERS: Use the increments
• END CUSTOMERS: Served by end users via the
increment
• COLLEAGUES: Impacted by the Scrum Team
• EMPLOYERS: Writing the pay-check
• COMMUNITY: In which the team works
• OTHER: …?
• Any examples….?
• How has it impacted the value delivered…?
• Are you satisfied…?

An approach to developing software that relies on
team members making decisions based on empathy
towards impacted stakeholders.
This approach requires development teams to
creatively self-organize within the constraints of
their organizations, to work around the barriers
that isolate them from their stakeholders.
Empathy Driven Development is complementary
to Agile Software Delivery with Scrum and is key to
Scrum Activities and Events like Backlog
Management and Refining, Sprint Planning, Daily
Scrum and Sprint Review.
A Fresh Approach…
• Where would you inject
empathy into Scrum in
your organization? How?
• What are the top 3
barriers that might impede
this approach in your
organization?

• Stakeholders Inaccessible to
Development Team
• Un-validated Assumptions about
Stakeholder needs
• Layers of Proxies between Stake-
holders and Development Team
• Distrust between Stakeholder
Proxies and Development Team
• Cynicism / Apathy towards
Stakeholders
• No time / money to connect with
stakeholders
Common Barriers To EDD…?

• Empathy Map…
• Create a grid
• Flip-charts and tape
• With post-it’s, list
stakeholders
• For each stakeholder…
• ACCOUNTABILITY:
• MOST VALUABLE:
• MOST PAINFUL:
• 140 characters or less…!
• Review as a group
Getting Started…

An Example – Medical SW
• Imagine you are part of a Scrum Team that
creates software used by Doctors to enter
patient records.
• How would you fill out this table….?

An Example – Medical SW
Doctors
Nurses
Pharmacists
Patients
Hospital I.T.
Hospital Director
Other…?
Heal patient
Support Doctor
Right medicines
Get better
Support staff
Sustainable biz.
Intuitive, quick
Intuitive, quick
Accurate
Awesome care
Easy upgrade
Happy patients
More time on tool, less
time with patients
Poor 3rd party integration?
Irritated / frustrated doc
Tech support calls
High costs, poor NPS

Desired Outcomes
•Good conversations
•Un-validated assumptions
•Head scratching
•Curiosity
•Action items to connect with stake-holders
•Many follow-up actions and conversations
•But most importantly…

More Stakeholder Empathy…!

Useful Pattern…
Dr. John Kotter
http://www.kotterinternational.com/about-us/principles/

Possibilities…
• Developers to customer site…?
• Most influential / cynical…?
• Customers to developer sites…?
• No money…?
• Video customers using product
• Skype / GotoMeeting with
Webcam…?
• Self-organize…?
• Include in new-hire training / on-
boarding
• Must capture smiles and
frowns!

•Apply Empiricism:
• TRANSPARENCY: Current state of stakeholder empathy
• INSPECTION: Is it where you would like it to be?
• ADAPTATION: Self-organize to make it better!
• Empathy Map
• Observe stakeholders – face to face / webcam
• Talk to them, talk to each other
• Walk in their shoes
• Figure it out…!
Call to Action…

Learn More
https://www.vitalsmarts.com/influencer/

• What was your most valuable
takeaway?
• What is one baby step you will
take in the next 30 days to
apply what you learned today?

Let’s Talk…
Ravi Verma
The Org Whisperer
smoothapps
smoothapps
orgwhisperer

Empathy Driven Development: Rescuing Value from the Bermuda Triangle of Waste

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