Hi! Today I want to share with you a story about how I first came across the Agile philosophy and, in particular, the Scrum framework and how this led me to want to become a Product Owner.

The preamble

In 2016, I was invited to join a company that was one of the leaders in the supply of hardware and software for retail chains. In addition to hardware (POS, scales, packers, etc.), the company has quite successfully developed and sold solutions for managing cash transactions and warehouse. But the market does not stand still, and in fact I was invited to develop a new software solution in the company.

And this was a solution for retail loyalty programs. I had the experience of localizing Western solutions to the CIS market, forming an image of the solution, target audience, partners, which channels we use, and the advantages of the solution. In a word, Solution manager.

Actually, let's get back to the role. The trend in the market showed that retailers did not just want to give direct discounts, but to manage customer data and offer personalized loyalty programs. Among the current customers who have used our cash register software (this allows you to beat checks, calculate discounts on the matrix and print information required by law. In part, this cash-based software allowed you to set up discounts, but it did it poorly. I had to go into the code and write a new script. And it could take from 1-2 weeks from the idea to the implementation.

Our customers have a new request.

I'm driving like this (Conditional Marketing Director) in the morning and I see a billboard with a competitor's promotion or yesterday I read about their case on the WallMart blog. And so I'm so inspired by running for my Mac and I want to quickly set up a campaign, select a relevant audience, products (they are also called SKUs) and run a test on 5-10% of our stores. AAH? Can you do it?

And we said, of course. Give us six months, you will be our pilot and constantly give feedback, and pay us a little bit.

Damn, it's great! The startup approach. Sell first, then go do it!And now, actually, how Agile penetrated into us.

Waterfall vs Agile (Who would know what the hell it is)

Of course, the company worked according to the classical scheme of project management, then everyone lived like this: a large technical task, project managers, project deadlines according to the Gantt chart, developers with the approach you gave us clear tasks, deadlines and budgets and the Director who gathers large meetings once a week to discuss "Well, will we arrive soon?" And the client lived for now with promises…

Inspiration from Silicon Valley

Our main shareholder, who lived in the USA, saw, spied, read, I don't know about that. It turns out that the leading technology companies in the United States, which are located in Silicon Valley and which are rapidly getting us hooked on digital dopamine, are using some new way of managing Agile product creation and development?!? Returning to our cloudy mother Russia, tanned and still wet from the ocean drops, He, the Founder, said: "We will live according to Agile!"

And who in those years in the Russian Federation could or said that he could, was probably only a "ScrumTrek".

Especially without choosing, the executive director signed a contract and we went into the history of Agile with ScrumTrek.

Training

First, a kick-off. For 2 days, the entire team of top managers and participants of the future pilot were pumped with knowledge about Agile + The history of the creation of Agile - (We discussed how great it is to meet at a ski resort in Colorado, drink mulled wine and come up with an Agile manifesto)

+ How wrong it is to develop for a long, long, long time, and then show the customer or the market that they have developed

+ How cool were the companies that believed in Agile boosted

+ Well, the Scrum frameworks, Kanban, etc. - (But you guys are clearly prescribed Scrum)

And then we ran into difficulties...

Pilot project

After the training, a pilot project was created consisting of 3 people who, after training and under the supervision of experienced comrades from ScumTrek, will go into a bright future. Actually, I became one of those lucky ones. What goals have we been set for 6 months:

+ Roll out a product with a set of features

+ Create a lead funnel

+ Start creating content and actively participate in various events

And where is the development, you ask?

She was in another office, but we tried to communicate actively. It lasted 2 months. Everyone began to understand that we need one office and we are all making a product together.

So what were the cadences in this whole Agile celebration?

Scrum in action

+ We launched Daily immediately and without hesitation. This is an internal meeting. Here we licked our wounds from another communication with stakeholders and decided what to do next

+ We have committed that once every 2 weeks we will talk about the success of our event. After 1.5 months, the top management began to ask us.

Guys, where are the sales? Remember, there was no such goal)

+ Planning was a continuous stream of analyzing the wishes from customers that sales managers brought. We fought back as best we could, as we concentrated on creating the features we were paid for. The argument "We do what we pay for" did not convince sales managers. Prioritization of tasks. You haven't heard. Whoever shouts louder about their wishes will knock out the team's resource. Like brokers on some stock exchange.

So Sales tried to cram the next customer wishes into the team

+ Retro On Friday, the pub with the team was the most effective retro in my memory

As a result, after 2 months of Scrum implementation, feedback went out that we were doing bullshit, everything used to be better and now here is your brain Profile. Give us back our waterfall.

Uff…

We are making a product for a loyal audience

Remember, we still have a client who wants and is ready to put up with any bugs, the main thing is to give us a tool for quickly checking marketing promotions. We are starting to manually configure them and run them together with the client. The first successful cases appear. Our evangelist at the company in the chat of marketers of the Republic of Belarus begins to talk about successful cases. We are stopping development in the Russian Federation for now and focusing on a loyal customer base from the Republic of Belarus. During my frequent business trips to this small country, I fell in love with the local cuisine, cleanliness and reasonable prices with my salary and constantly brought gifts for the team.

So we removed the negativity on the team and began to focus on developing the product for a loyal audience.

The functionality is expanding and we can work not only with grocery retail, but also with fashion.

In 1 year we have 50% of the market, in 1.5 years 80% of the market of retail chains in Belarus.

We have become stronger, it's time to achieve results in the Russian Federation. I'll pause here and share if this post gets 100 likes. I'll tell you how we rocked the Russian market.

Results

A year later, we entered the top 3 for the implementation of loyalty programs for retail chains. Major regional players have appeared among our customers. We have received two nominations in the marketing tools competition. "The best loyalty program in the CIS" and "The best solution of the year for automating loyalty programs for retail chains"

Conclusions

It was an incredibly difficult case. To turn the development of products from solving momentary requests from the most demanding customers to a solution that will be in demand by almost all retail chains. Has Agile and Scrum helped us bring a software solution to market faster?

Key findings:

• Transparency: Agile and Scrum provide transparency to the development process, allowing you to see where the team is going and why
• Regular feedback: It is important to meet with "loyal" customers more often and collect feedback
• Flexibility: Agile allows you to quickly adapt to changes in requirements and the market. We took into account new introductory legislation and trends

P.S.

I became an Agile Evangelist

Now, in any team and startup, I motivate you to immediately switch to Agile principles. Well, Scrum is one love )

Conclusion

It was an incredibly difficult case. To turn the development of products from solving momentary requests from the most demanding customers to a solution that will be in demand by almost all retail chains. Has Agile and Scrum helped us bring a software solution to market faster?

Key findings:

• Transparency: In our case, Agile and Scrum allowed us to ensure transparency of the development process, which allowed us to see where the team was going and why it was doing such features at this very moment.
• Regular customer feedback: I met and flew to customer meetings on a regular basis to conduct demos, interviews and collect feedback. Even in a year I earned myself a "silver" stout in S7 (more than 25 flights)
• Flexibility: Agile allows you to quickly adapt to changes in requirements and the market. We took into account the new introductory legislation and the trends taking place in the market. Yes, in fact, we were trendsetters ourselves. With the retail chain "HIPPO" - the leader of grocery retail in the Republic of Belarus, when we were on the Pokemon Go hype, we launched promotions to attract a young audience to hypermarkets.

P.S.

I became an Agile Evangelist

Now, in any team and startup, I motivate you to immediately switch to Agile principles. Well, Scrum is one love )