How do you deliver business value in every sprint?

Published: March 24, 2020, 8:11 p.m.

b'

In this episode of the Trainer Talk supplemental series to the Agile Coaches\' Corner Podcast, Professional Scrum Trainer Sam Falco answers the questions:\\xa0How do you that in the first Sprint? Don\\u2019t you have to build out all your infrastructure first?\\u201d

Prove Your Infrastructure Works

One common question I hear from students in my Professional Scrum Master classes\\xa0is, \\u201cHow do you deliver business functionality every Sprint, including the first one? Don\\u2019t you have to build out all your infrastructure first?\\u201d

It\\u2019s true that on a new software development initiative, there\\u2019s a lot of architectural and infrastructure work to be done at the beginning. But infrastructure alone doesn\\u2019t give stakeholders the information they need to decide whether to continue funding the project. You need to deliver some kind of business functionality to prove that the infrastructure you\\u2019ve built actually works. Stakeholders need to know that work they care about is happening.

Deliver Business Functionality

What might that look like? There\\u2019s a great example in Ken Schwaber\\u2019s book Software in 30 Days. He describes a project to build a mobile banking app. In the first sprint, the development team did a lot of work on architecture and infrastructure, but they also provided a way to connect to a web portal, designed a basic front end, and created a landing page where customers would ultimately be able to log in. They didn\\u2019t even build the capability to log in\\u2014all you could do was hit the front page.

Obviously, you wouldn\\u2019t want to release that as a product, but it still provides some small slice of business value. It provides something for stakeholders to evaluate and collaborate on with the Scrum Team. What\\u2019s the response time? Does the design look good? What might customers want to see once they log in? Was it worth continuing this project? They decided that it was. And if they hadn\\u2019t, the team wouldn\\u2019t have wasted time building out a platform that was never going to be used.

Let us know what you thought about this supplemental episode of the Agile Coaches\\u2019 Corner. If you\\u2019re interested in training, visit agilethought.com/training or call us at 877.514.9180 to learn more. And if you have a question you want us to answer on the next Trainer Talk episode, email us at podcast@agilethought.com.

Want to Learn More or Get in Touch?

Register for our upcoming web meeting "Virtual Lean Coffee | How To Thrive In A New Virtual World"

See available training courses at agilethought.com/training.

Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes at\\xa0AgileThought.com!

Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

'