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Why Customer Collaboration is Painful? How can we improve?

James is an Agile Coach. He has picked up his current assignment for Agile Transformation for large product development.

One of his observations was business or customer was no way involved in product solutions development.

They were far from the product development teams.

Team members were tried to invite the business and customers to share their insight with the PO, but the PO was not accessible most of the time.

Business does not find any value to involve themselves with IT on the solution side. They want results!

IT is an expert in building IT solutions and the Business wants to keep themselves aways for all these discussions.

Team members were not able to appreciate what they are developing and how those solutions will be consumed by the end-users. They were struggling to visualize the end-users’ usages of the systems.

Team members discover issues later the course of the development proceeding in feature delivery flow.

In today’s digital era, we have to build the first time right product as often as feasible. When the customer has been involved in co-creating the end solution, it is very much likely we may succeed in this approach.

James had an incredibly challenging assignment as an Agile coach to address this issue. How to enhance customer engagement?

One of the Agile Values says,

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

One of the principles says

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

Now, where are the business involvement? How to expand?

After several months of close scrutiny, James discovers there are many impediments in the organization which is not supporting the customer to come to close to the IT organizations.

One of the blockers is Organizational structure.

IT and Business are 2 building blocks.

One invests money to build products, and another builds the products.

As everyone needs capital to exist, IT always seeking funds.

So Businesses, as they are generating revenues, are invariably in upper controls. There is always conflict and wrestling.

In the end, who has money they dominate in the argument! else fund will go somewhere else! Nobody dares to pinpoint such an issue which is slowing down the organization.

There are many people who are playing the interface role. There are many roles created to complete these jobs. All these roles are a very senior role, and their everyday activities involve managing the same. Both of the IT side and the Business side. They are gatekeepers, enablers, and messengers from both sides of the wall in the product development flow!

Those employees are feeding the business organization. The business is pretty comfortable with these jobs. As they are not directly involved and information is also fed to them. They were protecting each other and defending each other roles.

87 percent of organizations agree on traditional experiences no longer satisfy customers. (Source: Accenture)

86 percent of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or inadequate communication for workplace failures (Source: Salesforce)

James had an arduous task to break, these communication barriers, and establish a strong agile team by dismantling these barriers need to find out. He involves a third-party consultant to undertake this assignment.

He & the consultant did a value stream mapping workshop to understand the execution speed. And figure out where most of the time consumed. He had found that as too many layers are involved in between development teams and business stakeholders, the time taking is remarkably significant.

The new team of Change agents has recommended a new lean organization. The layers in between, people/roles in between have been optimized. Team members should be able to access direct customers with minimal layers and communication barriers.

Initially, customer representatives(Business) were not comfortable with these new ways of working. There were many unknown initially. But with an appropriate workshop and hand-holding, they started feeling comfortable. There was a lot of top pressure as the Business people were not enthusiastic to participate in such events. For a substantial period of their career, they were not done with such work. They are more comfortable with domain work. They would love to continue to play the role of end-users of the IT system. They feel lost when we talk about IT jargon.

Earlier model customer representatives are in the upper hand. They were the receiver of the solution. In that model, it was natural to get into conflict and blame mode. Team members used to waste a lot of time in mail exchange, in meeting to demonstrate who is right. As customers used to pay money, they used to dictate the discussion. This creates disappointment, dissatisfaction at the team level. Their KPI was different. By collaborating with the IT product development team, they were not getting many benefits. All these aspects had to alter with the new model.

Leadership was not convinced for long to let their business people involve IT solutions building. After several rounds of benefits realization discussion, these factors are obvious that at a certain % of their involvement to start with and incrementally we can expand based on the demand. The pilot approach demonstrated the issue of discovery at a subsequent period has reduced with this fresh approach. This leadership is again convinced that it is workable and value-added. Once leaders are agreeing, it considers much natural to coach the business team members to collaborate with IT.

The change management team has submitted to optimize some of these roles and direct, in small size connectivity with the development team members. E.g. the Earlier model, many large size flow of requirements were handled by the many business representatives. Now Few large size flow of requirements were managed by a few business representatives. It was comfortable for business people to deal with volumes and sizes. It was easy for the development team members to instantaneously access the business.

New roles and responsibilities for this new structure has been clearly defined. There were autonomy and commitment improved among team members for this new structure. With the help of the agile scrum model team members are able to rapidly minimize the risk and demonstrate the progress.

Various automated tools have been used to establish there is complete transparency of product development flow. Product team members are able to clearly view the bottleneck and eliminate rapidly. Business stakeholders were are having concerns if they have to spend more time with IT or not. But with the right structure and eliminating ambiguity through tools, everything is unusually apparent. Who is going to do what, by when? The frequent synch has have diminished any such issues.

Scrum team members are a coach to accept, support, and welcome the business team members. They were encouraged to inspire the business team member’s participation in the initial days. They handhold the business respectively for initial days. The redundant roles were coming in the middle layers of the development flow e.g proxy roles, interface roles either they have been moved to the business side or in other teams similar business side roles.

Rewards and recognized as a whole team. The complete teams win when they were able to build features at every sprint level. The entire chain of product development is celebrating success and taking the blame for failure. The measurement indicates the improvement team is making, The satisfaction index has progressively raised to substantiate this new model.

It took James and his team to optimize the structure and improved the customer engagement for 6 months to one years with many activities, discussion, workshop and pilot, etc work.

The top leaders’ blessing and good change agents were key in this drive.

There was considerable value, speed improvement has been observed in these unique ways of working.

Social Skill for High Performance Team

Why Social skills are one of the fundamental ingredients to select team members?

As social animals, we adapt our conversations and actions to conform our audiences. To varying degrees, we note our performance and modify it to establish the impressions we seek.

In today’s business every assignment we take up, the fundamental part is a collaboration with individuals as comprehensive as feasible.

How well am I getting along with others? It predominantly depends on our Self.

How is my Self has been developed?

We are all different! But in a group, we are all in the same family! We adjust to the rules and standards of the group, We have a shared goal, Shared Understanding, and Shared Purpose.

A substantial part of our Self again dependent on other individual and their Self. As we operate in a social system.

The structure of our social factors are

The characters we play ( Parent, Teacher, Friend, etc)

The social identities we construct ( Priest, Doctor, Nurse, Engineers, etc)

The correlations we establish with others ( Harvard MBA Grads vs Standford engineers ...etc)

How other Individuals judge us

The surrounding society & Ambient

Everything shapes our self and we influence other’s self. Occasionally we are independent and occasionally we are interdependent.

It is significant for us to choose our team members with all these factors.

Indicators that can give us an orientation about these social skills increase the chance of success.

Team members who are having polish social skills are advantage from others who do not have so mature social skills.

One of the crucial parameters is self-knowledge. Knowing Thyself! How much we know about ourselves? Can we control our behavior? Our emotions at the relevant time?

What is our Self Map? How well our belief system influence our self Map? An excellent team player designs their map respectively. They find out what needs to adjust to adapt to the prevailing context.

These are some questions we can ask ourselves and likewise can figure out from others. All of these factors matter when we work as a team.

We have to be aware of Self-serving bias. What is that?

A self-serving bias is the familiar habit of an individual taking credit for positive events or outcomes, but blaming outside factors for negative events.

e.g I have done a wonderful speech because I have natural to skill and also I have practiced hard. If I have performed inadequately, it is because the system or infrastructure was not good!

Self-serving bias also emerges when we compare ourselves with others. We have to figure out all such factors if team members are having such bias.

Unrealistic optimism, an incident that shows us to be insufficiently in touch with reality. However, establishing that we are in fact making an error when assessing the likelihood of subsequent outcomes is exceedingly difficult. Being too optimistic can contribute to impracticality and overconfidence.

Another area to consider into

Self-efficacy and self-esteem, sound similar but are distinct concepts.

If we believe we can do something, that’s self-efficacy.

If we admire ourselves overall, that’s self-esteem. Both are very much essential ingredients to look into when we select team members.

Self-esteem in some cultures correlates strictly with “what others judge of me and my group.”

For some cultures, self-esteem is more intimate and less relational.

Most individuals are exceptionally motivated to maintain their self-esteem.

Just give it a thought, What happens when our self-esteem is threatened? What do you do?

Cultures also shape the self. Many individuals in individualistic western cultures assume an independent self. Others, often in collectivistic cultures, accept a more interdependent self. This is how our self has unfolded in a community context. Balance Self-esteem in desired in a team context.

Moods also influence our interaction with other team members. Moods pervade our thinking.

When we are in an awful mood, we have more depressing thoughts. Happy people, by contrast, are more trusting, more loving, more responsive.

Good and bad moods trigger memories of incidents associated with those moods. Moods color our judgments of ongoing experiences. Good team members recognize how to modulate their moods so that they can generate the finest atmosphere for synergy.

Another area that influences team members is Social anxiety and Shyness. Social anxiety is an unreasonable fear of being negatively assessed by other individuals.

Individuals are more likely to feel shy when they’re not certain how to respond, don’t know how others will behave, or when attention is on them.

This created an issue at team performance because the individual who is shy will avert situations that most individuals consider “normal.” Some amount of social discomfort is reasonable. We desire to identify team members who maintain the balance.

When you look for a High-performance team, look for all these aspects in team members. Highlight those factors and coach the members to improve on these factors( These are few, there are many such). When all these skills are in balance team members will create a positive team environment and achieve many things together.

Coaching/Mentoring Contract for a High-performance team

Leaders are the coach of the team. Scrum master is coach the team. Senior team members are the mentor for the teams. Once Individual have reached a particular level of maturity, coaching and mentoring by these individual will aid others to become better at whatever we are doing.

We need to coach and mentor where we identify opportunities to ensure we build a strong High-performance team.

How do we start this journey?

Coaching and Mentorship is an agreement where two individuals conform to adhere to a particular way of functioning for an accepted goal & Purpose.

The goal could be to become better whatever we are operating.

The learning has to flow from upstream to downstream( from Mature team members to new/entry-level team members). The awareness has to grow, unknown challenges have to explore and come out with unique ways to resolve for progress.

Both the party will steer for a known and unknown territory together and come out with diverse experiences. Better or bitter whatever it may be.

The purpose could be, both the parties should candidly discuss what could be our short-term goals and capture those.

Few areas can help us to structure and start this journey.

We openly examine and capture the benefits of such type of agreement and we acknowledge if there is any adjustment desired.

This meeting has to be scheduled in the calendar in well advance so that everyone is ready.

As coaches or mentors, we have to establish a space where we allow team members to share their side of the story. As a coach, we suggest many queries to explore their world and motivate team members thought to investigate and explore many options.

As a coach & mentor, we recommend many tools and guidelines to look into and come back with queries, if any.

A) Where are we now?

B) What is our overall goal? Short term and Long term? What we would admire to achieve? Solving the complex question, Improving the performance gap. Enhancing current ways of operating, etc

C) What are our roles and responsibilities? How do we ensure we are aligned for a common goal?

D) What is the support system enabling us? What are the things we should look into growing support from the system?

E) What cost we have to bear to achieve the new heights? Are we ready to pay this price?

F) How do we adhere to each other? what is our boundary?

G) What will be our feedback mechanism? Agreement to share constructive criticism.

H) When we will meet? How many times in a week? When we will demonstrate our progress?

I) A confidential agreement? The platform should be safe to discuss.

J) What behavior is acceptable and not acceptable?

K) How do we know we are irritating each other, hurting each other’s ego? what is the signal to check we have crossed the boundary

L) Celebration time, when should we celebrate? and based on what criteria?

M) Any point we do not choose to discuss? which are too personal and not impacting performance?

N) An agreement to create open, trusting, transparent ambient?

O) An agreement to come out from the contract? When should we choose that we have succeeded with our goal?

As Mentee or coachee, I adhere to these below points

A) As a Coachee, I understand the purpose of our meeting

B) As a Coachee, I understand what I am going to discuss

C) As a Coachee, I am prepared and share all the challenges and progress I am making

D) As a Coachee, we discuss together to measure the progress

E) As a Coachee, I devote my times to demonstrate dedication and commitment

F) As a Coachee, I look for feedback which can help me to experiment, study and reflect

G) As a Coachee, I openly discuss what is working and what is not working and we agree to course correct

H) As a Coachee, we identify the development areas and work upon on those

I) As a Coachee, I comment about the openness, a trust created in our discussion

J) As a Coachee, I share my feedback about my coach/mentor

K) As a Coachee, I ensure I cancel the meeting well ahead and the same action admitted from the Coach/mentor side

L) As a Coachee, I ensure our relationship maintained and we work together to improve the same

When we prepare ourselves with such a structural approach, we can discover how will this procedure is supporting all of us.

We could be a mentor or Mentee, coach, or coachee all of us will get benefit from this structural preparation. We can consistently customize and reform upon this.