All Things Agile - Episode 007 - Tips for Startups

In this episode, I tackle some common challenges faced by young start-ups trying to implement Agile. If you are a solo entrepreneur or have a few cofounders trying to launch a successful tech startup, then I certainly suggest you checkout today's episode.



As mentioned in the episode, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a review on iTunes. Of course, I hope that you will leave a 5-star review. I will try to mention reviewers in upcoming episodes. Here is a link to subscribe and post a review: itms://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/all-things-agile/id640441739 



All Things Agile - Episode 007 - Tips for Startups



Transcript:

Welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast! Your destination
for tips and interviews with the leaders in the world of Agile. Don’t forget to
subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, and please check out our sponsor:
TeamXcelerator.com. And now, here’s your host: Ronnie Andrews Jr.

Hello everyone and welcome to the All Things Agile
Podcast! We have another great show lined up for you today. In this episode,
we’ll be covering tips for startup companies. But before we begin, a friendly
reminder to please submit an iTunes review. The reviews are very helpful and a
way to acknowledge the great free content presented on this show. I also look
forward to giving you a shout out in an upcoming episode. So let’s dive into
today’s topic.

How to implement an Agile solution in a young company? A
quick reminder that this podcast is for informational purposes only and accepts
no legal liability. So, in the case of this episode, I will be defining a young
company as 1-3 co-founders. A company certainly less than 10 members in total.
Agile is often considered the cool thing to do. So many people try to start
using it! A common mistake is to start Agile methodologies before having the
critical mass to do so.

Let me take a moment to better explain. Methodologies such
as Scrum are often designed for larger organizations and not 2 co-founders. For
example, a typical Scrum practice is to have 7, plus or minus 2 team members.
Having many team members provides resiliency. If a team member isn’t feeling
well, goes on vacation or is otherwise unavailable, the team can still
function. There are other team members available to absorb bumps in the road.

Also, don’t forget the roles of Product Owner and Scrum
Master. A fresh startup doesn’t likely have the resources to staff a team this
large. Chances are a startup has 2-3 people, working long hours and performing
virtually every role, including taking out the trash. Literally. So what other
Agile approaches, such as Kanban? What about those?

Well, I definitely believe that Kanban is a bit more sexy
at the moment and it certainly has its advantages. It’s a great tool for teams
that are more queue based in the work, such as product support teams. It’s a
lightweight approach with minimal formalities and that said, based on my
personal experience though, I still believe that Kanban needs at least a
minimal level of critical mass to be successful. I would recommend a team size
of at least 5 to successfully implement Kanban. It can be a daunting
challenge to build a Kanban team with only 2 or 3 founders who are wearing
numerous hats. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but that it simply may not be
wise.

So what can I recommend for a young startup? I would advise
not worrying about trying to follow a structured methodology. If you are in the
early stages of 1-5 company members, it’s great if you can adopt a full
methodology, but you may find yourself focused more on following ceremonies,
rather than the urgent needs of building a company. The key is to not worry
about having an efficient team when you’re just starting. Instead, I challenge
you to become an effective team. Simply put, if you are efficient, but not
effective, it won’t matter because you’ll be out of business. Doing the wrong
thing well, is still doing the wrong thing at the end of the day.

You can still apply Agile principles though. For example,
the Backlog concept is a great way to ensure that you’re always working on the
most important thing first. A young company certainly has limited resources. It
is imperative that it focuses on the most impactful items first. This does not
mean firefighting. Many small and even large organizations join in
firefighting. They spend their day carrying a fire hose, putting out one fire
after another. Does that sound familiar to, you know, perhaps your own company?

A significant danger in this approach is that the leaders
rarely examine what is truly important to their business and customers.
Successful companies must take the time to lay out their priorities and
determine really what is impactful and focus on one thing at a time. The goal
is to not do everything perfect. Striving for pure perfection is a fallacy and
will just slow you down. A second suggestion is that you can leverage someone
else’s expertise. If your company only has a handful of people, it can be hard
to take advantage of traditional methodologies such as Scrum.

An ultimate approach is delegation. If your company needs a payment processing system. Rather than trying to spin up a large
development team to implement it, why not leverage an existing payment service?
In other words, learn to delegate and let other best of breed vendors do what
they do best. If you are not able to directly afford to do so, you may want to
consider joint venture agreements. You may be able to structure win-win deals
that can expand your company without requiring large up-front capital.

Most entrepreneurs make the mistake of trying to do
everything themselves and they also try to have total control. As a result,
they fail to delegate. And, they do so to their own demise. Learn to play to
your strengths and delegate the rest. A third suggestion is flexibility. Many
Agile newcomers try to follow everything by the book. The truth is you must
know when to follow, when to bend and when to break the rules. Every
organization is different. You must look at your company and determine what
practices are truly practical for you. It’s not that the best practices are not
valuable – they are! They are best practices for a reason.

However, not every practice will align well with your
company or with your current size and maturity, especially as a young startup.
Learn to adapt practices during your Agile journey. If you adopt some of these
suggestions, your company can hopefully gain some momentum and start to implement
the more full software methodologies later. When your organization has
developed the critical mass of size, maturity and revenue – you’ll find these
approaches to provide structure and sanity. Again, there’s definitely a benefit
to some of the more structured Agile implementations. But I’ll say once again
in summary though: depending on your unique situation, please consider
different Agile implementations to better suit your needs. Focus on being
effective before worrying about becoming efficient. In other words, learn to
meet your customer’s needs and then learn how to do that efficiently through
process and tools.

Play to your strengths and delegate to others so that your
company can grow faster and avoid large, unnecessary development costs. Learn
to be flexible and when to follow, bend and break the rules. Lastly, remember
that Agile adoption is a journey, not an event. It doesn’t happen overnight and
it really never ends. It’s a continuous refinement process to take your company
to the next level.

With that said, I love startups! And I hope that you found
this information very useful. If you’d like to find out more, please consider
our email newsletter, by following the link on our AgileInstructor.com website.
You can even send me an email using [email protected].
I certainly look forward to hearing from each of you soon! And thank you very
much for your support!

Thank you for listening to
All Things Agile. We look forward to you subscribing to the podcast on iTunes
and leaving a kind review. Thanks and God bless!