The Art of Agile Development, 2nd Edition

Purpose

AUDIENCE

Product Managers, Coaches

We understand the reasons for our work.

Every team has a purpose: a reason for its existence and expectations about its output. But, far too often, that purpose isn’t communicated to the team. Instead, team members are told a lot of details about what to do…but not why they’re going to do it, or how it helps the company achieve its goals.

The Purpose practice is about making sure everyone understands the big picture, not just the details.

Start With the Vision

Before a product has a team, someone in the company has an idea. Suppose it’s someone in the Wizzle-Frobitz company. (Not a real company.) “Hey!” they exclaim, knocking their coffee off their desk. “We could frobitz the wizzles so much better if we had software to sort the wizzles first!”

Okay, it’s usually not that dramatic. The point is, a team’s purpose starts out as an idea focused on results. Sell more hardware by bundling better software. Attract bigger customers by scaling more effectively. Sell more cloud services by providing machine learning technology. These are all real examples from teams that I’ve worked with.

Somewhere in the transition from idea to team, the compelling part—the vision of a better future—often gets lost. Details crowd it out. You have to staff a team with programmers, domain experts, and UX designers. You have to define features, plan releases, and report on progress. Hustle, people, hustle!

That’s a shame, because nothing matters more than delivering ...