There’s no such thing as an agile contract - Agile Slovenia 2014
At every agile meetup I’ve attended (and I’ve been to quite many by now) an inevitable question pops up: we’ve become agile but our customers have not; what can we do about it? Over the years I’ve come to a realisation that while we can preach all day customer collaboration and acceptance of change, our customers are busy with their own issues and all they want to hear from us is a promise what functionality will we provide by which date and at what cost. Our naive expectation that we can somehow eschew the iron triangle, is actually a clear sign that we don’t really care about our customers and their problems, but only about our own convenience and well being. But everything is not lost! By having an in-depth understanding of the customers and by leveraging the fact that they are actually the ones with the most skin in the game (even more than we do), a good product/project manager can make tough choices while keeping the trust of the customer and eventually delivering results in line with the expectations of all the stakeholders, not just product people and engineers.
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There’s no such thing as an agile contract - Agile Slovenia 2014
- 1. THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS AN AGILE CONTRACT Agile Slovenia 2014 Dušan Omerčević, VP of Product Development @dusano http://restreaming.me
- 2. We’ve become agile but our customers have not; how can we make our customers more agile?
- 3. We can’t do much; we are bound by the terms of contract.
- 5. Agenda 1. What is contract? 2. What is “agile contract” unicorn supposed to be? 3. Three example contracts 4. Surviving without unicorns
- 6. An agreement creating obligations enforceable by law. http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/contract
- 7. Why contracts? • A way for customer and vendor to discuss the common goal. • Agreement drafting is taken much more serious if law is involved. • Insurance policy against many things that commonly go wrong • Save your ass document
- 8. Essential elements of a contract • What • When • Price
- 9. Essential elements of a contract • What • When • Price Agile contract unicorn is a dream that only two elements of a contract can be specified, while either time, price, or scope can be left out.
- 10. Traffic Management System Total project value: 5M euro
- 11. Our part: Control Software • price: ~100K EUR • time: August ‘04 to January ‘05 • scope: detailed functional specifications
- 13. Vendor point of view • price: standard hourly rate • time: January to July ‘09 • scope: 3000 hours “Time and materials” contract
- 14. Our point of view • price: ~150,00 EUR • time: January to July ‘09 • scope: yellow pages with user reviews and feedback “fixed-everything” contract
- 16. Project plan • price: 7 engineers • time: May to July 2015 • scope: reports aggregation, reporting dashboard, basic campaign management internal, but still “fixed-everything” contract (enforced/sanctioned by CEO)
- 17. Surviving without unicorns 1. Understand customer’s internal politics
- 18. Surviving without unicorns 1. Understand customer’s internal politics 2. Put buffers in place when planning
- 19. Surviving without unicorns 1. Understand customer’s internal politics 2. Put buffers in place when planning 3. Concentrate on scope
- 20. Surviving without unicorns 1. Understand customer’s internal politics 2. Put buffers in place when planning 3. Concentrate on scope 4. Don’t compromise on quality
- 21. Surviving without unicorns 1. Understand customer’s internal politics 2. Put buffers in place when planning 3. Concentrate on scope 4. Don’t compromise on quality 5. Good personal relationships go a long way
- 22. Agile elements of a standard contract • milestones • change requests • early termination clauses
- 23. Conclusions • Contracts are grounded in legal system • If both parties agree, contracts can be changed at will • If parties disagree, contract must be specific enough for a judge to rule on the obligations • Good project managers were agile long before it was cool
- 24. HVALA! Dušan Omerčević, VP of Product Development @dusano http://restreaming.me
- 25. Photo credits Unicorn - https://www.flickr.com/photos/vblibrary/8472794574/