How to make your clients Agile without teaching them?

Agile SCRUM defines the way how people should cooperate on the dialy basis. However, reality brings several situations where Agile rules are hard to use. How to handle such exceptions not destroying Agility in the team?

Projects are usually done in few phases. Like I described in this post, the delivery phase is usually the hardest to manage. Why? In reality, you get customer attention at the end of whole development process. This of course shouldn’t happen but… Life is life. How to manage such exceptions?

1. Have a good talk with your customer and construct the contract in such way that it will clearly state when changes in the software are allowed and when not. Also, when you notice lack of interest from the client side after providing to him sprints results, inform him that later changes will seriously influence the delivery date. This usually works.

2. If the second step won’t work, you can construct the contract in such way, that after each sprint, customer gets invoice. Of course not whole project cost, but the part that was made for him. This is just a trick that always works. Suddenly, next day customer is sending replies on old emails and checks your results very deeply. This is not the best solution for lack of response from the client side, but made in polite way, can bring only good things to the project.

What is most important! Customer attention and remarks while the product grows is the most important aspect of the whole Agile development approach.

Agile SCRUM defines the way how people should cooperate on the daily basis. However, in reality we are faced with situations where Agile rules are hard to use. How to handle such exceptions not destroying Agility in the team?

Projects are usually developed in a few phases. Like I described in my previous post, the delivery phase is usually the hardest to manage. Why?

client_feedback

In reality, your customer checks the results at the very end…

Of course it shouldn’t be happening but… Life is life. How to manage such instances?

Have a good talk with your customer and construct the contract in a way that clearly states when changes in the software are allowed and when not. Also, when you notice lack of interest on the part of the client after providing sprints results to him, inform him that further changes will seriously influence the delivery date. This usually works.
If the second step doesn’t work, you can stipulate in the contract that after each sprint a customer gets an invoice. Of course, it wouldn’t cover the whole project cost, but only the part that was already completed. This is just a simple trick that always works. The following day the customer immediately sends replies to old emails and checks your results very thoroughly. This is not the best solution for the client’s lack of response, but made in polite way, can bring only good things to the project.