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Big ambitions but no budget or commitment to match
- Due diligence prior to taking on a role or contract
- Set clear expectations about tech budget / resources / hiring
- Clear roadmap scenarios based on budget / resources / hiring
- Escalate and highlight the promise versus current commitment
Stifled by fear from top execs and committees
- Need to shield the team from these politics
- Appoint someone who gets it to represent the team at board/committee level
- Build confidence through customer feedback and traction
- Keep the group onside and build more support / momentum inside the org
The ‘old guard’ blocking change
- Endeavour to get to know the people blocking
- Build an understanding of their motive
- Try to move forward with support but move forward regardless
- Create buy-in and support from more senior stakeholders / execs
Wooly and fluffy directions and desires from top execs
- Involve top execs in co-creation of roadmaps
- Ask direction questions that can be turned into SMART goals
- Create story maps based on discussions and get sign-off
- Keep the top execs closely involved during planning / review sessions
Perfectionism halting delivery
- Explain the lean startup approach
- Build a startup mentally and culture
- Aim for quality and to solve challenges but to ‘test’ assumptions
- Focus on solutions to problems not details of graphics / UI
Siloed ops and delivery (or other) functions
- Establish metrics e.g. time from done to release is 6 weeks
- Present systems issues and business impact to stakeholders
- Run a trial with Ops engineers in product/agile team
- Review new time from done to release
Agile teams being crippled by traditional management practices and business models
- Highlight agile as a business imperative
- Link it into any existing lean / continuous improvement activities
- Start with small trials to gain some traction and facts
- Bring ‘the business’ into the product/agile teams as sponsors (one team)
Uninformed non-technical committees driving technology decisions
- Establish a technology strategy board (mixture of business and technical stakeholders)
- Ensure that sign-off of new tech cannot be achieved without tech sign-off
- Empower teams to have the power to make or inform tech choices
- Build a clear tech roadmap that is signed off but can be evolved
Desire from execs for detailed estimates and costs for uncertain domains
- Provide some stats about inaccuracies of traditional estimation techniques
- Utilise forecasting techniques i.e. track cycle time, no. stories done over time
- Use budgets as a constraint to solve a particular challenge
- Break large programmes down into smaller deliveries to test assumption / market
- Deliver consistently little and often and the requests may stop