Agile Teams

Observability is a crucial aspect of building and maintaining reliable applications, and at Easy Agile, we've dedicated significant effort to making our applications as observable as possible. In a recent talk at Atlas Camp 2025, Ryan Brown, our Staff Engineer, shared our experiences transitioning to Forge and the lessons learned along the way. Here are the key highlights from his talk.

What is observability and why it matters

Observability is about gathering and visualizing enough data to understand the health of your software systems and fix problems when they arise. Unlike traditional monitoring, which tells you what happened and when, observability goes a step further to explain why and how issues occur.

For us at Easy Agile, strong observability has:

• Helped us make better decisions about performance and infrastructure needs
• Drastically improved our customer support by letting us quickly pinpoint issues
• Let us adapt to the reality of modern, distributed applications

As Ryan put it during his talk: "When I was working on applications back in the day, we were running on two, three, maybe four data centers at most. Now we're talking about applications that grow at a global scale with people using them across the globe."

Modern applications are far more distributed than they used to be, with thick frontends becoming as complex as backends. This distribution makes the traditional approach of manually checking a few servers inadequate - we need sophisticated observability solutions to understand what's happening across our systems.

The three pillars of observability

Observability stands on three key pillars:

Metrics

These are the number-based measurements of your software - CPU usage, request times, error counts, and so on. But raw numbers alone aren't very helpful. Context is critical - knowing you have five errors is very different from knowing you have five errors from one specific user on one server over two minutes.

Metrics become particularly powerful when identifying trends over time, so you can pinpoint when performance issues began or correlate changes with system behavior.

Logs

Logs are often the first thing engineers get experienced with when dealing with observability. They provide detailed records of events and are the cornerstone of understanding what's happening in your system. They give more information than metrics alone, capturing not just what happened but details about each event that occurred.

They're richer in information but also generate more data. For example, logs might tell you an error occurred because an API returned a bad response - but that alone still doesn't tell you why the downstream API failed.

Traces

Traces help you understand what's happening across all your systems working together. They track transactions as they flow through various services, showing you exactly what happens when a user clicks a button or performs an action.

"Tracing is surprisingly simple," Ryan explained. "You just have a unique identifier for a transaction that gets shared from one system to the next system to the next system."

Traces are particularly useful when you can expose that identifier to end users when something goes wrong. That ID can show you exactly what happened in that transaction, taking the guesswork out of troubleshooting.

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Observability on Connect vs. Forge

Our current Connect approach

At Easy Agile, we've implemented comprehensive observability across our Connect apps.

• Metrics, logs, and traces captured for all our applications
• All this data sent to a third-party observability service to get a centralized view
• Front-end components that also send observability data to the same service

The approach reduces cognitive load on our engineers and gives complete end-to-end visibility into user journeys and what's happening across our systems. For this Ryan recommends that you can use commercial services like Datadog or New Relic, or even open-source options like Signoz.

Transition concerns for Forge

When we first looked at Forge, we had several questions:

• How well would tracing work with Forge's communication model?
• Could we define our own custom metrics?
• Would we be able to collect metrics and logs from both front-end and back-end?
• Could we identify specific user transactions for support purposes?

At the time of our evaluation, Forge functions were the primary compute option available, which raised questions about how standard tracing libraries would work in Forge's unique communication model.

Experimenting with a simple app

Instead of trying to migrate one of our bigger products, we created a simple "Sprint Notes" app to test observability on Forge. This let us:

• Quickly iterate through different Forge topologies
• Keep the experiment focused on observability
• Include all the necessary components (UI, API, database)

We took this app through several stages:

1. Connect on Forge: Running our Connect app through Forge
2. Forge with Remotes: Using two approaches - calling remotes through Forge functions, and calling remotes directly from the UI‍
3. Forge Native: Completely rewriting the app to use Forge functions and entity store

Key findings

Connect on Forge

When running our Connect app through Forge:

• All our existing observability worked without modifications
• Front-end and back-end metrics continued to function as before
• Tracing identifiers propagated correctly
• Logs and metrics didn't appear in the Atlassian Developer Console (which makes sense since we weren't using Forge modules)

The observability story for Connect on Forge is pretty straightforward - it just works. As Ryan noted, "All the existing observability that we had in place on Connect worked just as it did before. There was no big change or issues with what we saw there."

We even experimented with different methods of sending data to our observability service, including using a proxy under our own domain, and everything worked consistently as long as the correct content security headers were set.

Forge with remotes

For Forge with remotes, we found:

• Front-end and back-end observability mostly worked
• We had to set permissions.external.fetch.client to allow sending metrics from the front-end
• Adding these permissions required a major version upgrade
• Metrics didn't capture all API calls, particularly front-end calls to Atlas APIs
• Tracing identifiers weren't exposed to remote callers, limiting end-to-end tracing

"This is a little disappointing... we found that when we did calls to our remotes, Forge would generate tracing identifiers for use on the back-end, but unfortunately those identifiers weren't then being exposed to what was making those remote calls," Ryan explained.

While we could see logs in the Developer Console and some metrics were captured, the inability to propagate tracing identifiers back to callers meant we couldn't achieve full UI-to-database traceability or show transaction IDs to end users without implementing workarounds.

Forge native

With a fully native Forge approach:

• Custom metrics and basic tracing are possible but require significant work
• We needed to implement custom handling with libraries like OpenTelemetry
• UI observability remained similar to the remotes implementation
• We could access correlation IDs through undocumented Forge API features

We managed to create a proof of concept showing traces from Forge functions to our observability service, though implementing complete data store tracing would require additional work.

Recommendations and best practices

Based on our findings, we recommend:

1. Establish observability baselines

Figure out what data you genuinely need instead of collecting everything. Observability services charge by volume, so collecting unnecessary data can quickly become expensive.

2. Use OpenTelemetry‍

It aligns with Forge's internal implementation and provides good standardization. While it may be harder to use than some out-of-the-box solutions, the long-term benefits are worth it.

‍3. Consider an observability proxy

This enables:

• Authentication for incoming metrics
• Adding additional context
• Data redaction for sensitive information
• Decoupling your implementation from specific providers

When combined with OpenTelemetry, this approach means your Forge components don't need to know what observability service you're using, avoiding permission changes if you switch providers.

4. Plan permission updates strategically

Since they require major version upgrades, incorporate them early in your development.

5. Other important considerations

• Major version upgrades are required when adding permissions for observability
• The documentation for exporting logs and metrics is technically correct but easy to misinterpret
• Traces do not automatically propagate back to callers in remote implementations

Final thoughts

Achieving all three pillars of observability on Forge is possible, though it requires different approaches depending on your implementation strategy:

• Connect on Forge works seamlessly with existing observability
• Forge with remotes requires some additional configuration
• Forge native needs more custom implementation

These experiments are being prepared for open source, so stay tuned to Ryan's LinkedIn for updates.

The days of 'doing Agile' are over. As we enter 2025, organizations’ relationship with agility continues to evolve.

Economic pressures, technological advances, and hard-learned lessons are pushing organizations to rethink their approach to agility. While many companies still struggle with meaningful transformation, clear patterns are emerging that signal where agile practices are headed this year.

Drawing on insights from Agile experts and practitioners, here are eight key trends that we see defining how we work this year.

1. The Return to Agile Fundamentals

Key Highlights:

• Movement away from heavyweight frameworks back to core Agile principles and values
• Emphasis on simplicity and delivering customer value rather than ceremonial processes
• Integration of Agile practices into daily work without drawing attention to them

While large organizations continue to rely on structured frameworks to drive consistency across teams, we're seeing a growing groundswell of support for getting back to basics. This isn't about abandoning structure entirely - it's about finding the right balance. 

Teams are increasingly focused on streamlining processes, embracing continuous improvement, and maintaining an unwavering focus on delivering real customer value.

The pendulum is swinging back from scaled frameworks to fundamental engineering practices. Teams are incorporating agile practices into their daily workflows without the overhead of excessive ceremonies. Delivering with feature toggles, continuous integration, and trunk-based development are becoming more important than analysing burndown charts and a calendar full of unproductive ceremonies.

Expert take:

“Rather than telling people how to do their jobs, work with them to set the goals for a process that would make them and the company more successful. Measure success based on improved team behavior rather than adherence to a set of rules. Instead of Agile, push for agility. In that sense, Agile is never really over. It’s just transforming into what it should have always been.” 

- Jeff Gothelf, Product Management Author, Speaker, Trainer, and Coach

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2. The Evolution of Agile Roles

Key Highlights:

• More emphasis on technical leadership within teams rather than process-focused roles
• Shift from dedicated Scrum Master positions to embedded agile leadership
• Product management roles evolving to incorporate stronger business analysis capabilities

The job market for Agile roles is undergoing a significant transformation. Pure Scrum Master positions are evolving into hybrid roles that combine technical expertise with process leadership. This isn't just semantics - it reflects a deeper understanding that effective agile leadership requires both technical context and facilitation skills.

Engineering managers are expected to understand both system architecture and team dynamics. Instead of relying on external agile coaches, they're building these capabilities within their technical leadership. The focus has shifted from process adherence to technical mentorship and delivery optimization.

Product managers are also adapting to this new reality. They're becoming what some call "super ICs" - professionals who blend product thinking with solid business analysis skills. It's no longer enough to just manage a backlog; today's product leaders need to speak the language of both business and technology.

Expert take:

“First of all, I think it needs to be said, we should not panic. You do not need to abandon your career as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach, or Agilist of any kind. But we do need to think about it differently. Some suggest broadening your skills, which can certainly make you more valuable. Become a ‘technologist who is a Scrum Master’ or a ‘manager with agile coaching skills’. 

Keep in mind, this also may not require you to actually learn new skills, but to be smarter about how you position yourself and your existing capabilities. Know that organizations are looking for agile to be ‘baked in’ to the people they hire. You should broaden the scope of the types of roles you are searching for as well, because you might be surprised. I like to find companies that mention agile skills on job boards, then go and scour all of their open postings to see where else I might be able to apply.” 

- Brian Link, Business Agility Coach, Author, and Speaker 

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3. Cross-Functional Teams Become Truly Cross-Functional

Key Highlights:

• Teams capable of handling end-to-end delivery from discovery to implementation
• Breaking down traditional specializations in favor of full-stack capabilities
• Reducing dependencies between teams through better cross-functional team structure

The definition of "cross-functional" has evolved significantly. Modern engineering teams aren't just mixing developers and testers - they're creating truly autonomous units capable of handling the entire software lifecycle.

In effect, forward-thinking organizations are breaking down the remaining silos between frontend, backend, and DevOps specialists in favor of truly full-stack capabilities. Teams are increasingly taking ownership of the entire delivery pipeline, from initial discovery through to production deployment.

The most exciting part? Teams that embrace this approach are discovering they can deliver features faster and with better quality than ever before. When you own the entire process, you naturally make better decisions at every step. Plus, this approach not only avoids handovers and dependencies but also helps those teams develop into Product teams over time - armed with both domain knowledge as well as technical expertise.

Expert take:

“The nature of work is evolving. As challenges grow more complex and the pace of innovation accelerates, cross-functional collaboration is no longer a luxury — it’s a necessity. By embracing fluid roles, shared ownership, and open input, teams can unlock their full potential and deliver solutions that stand out in an increasingly competitive landscape.

So, the next time you hear someone talk about cross-functional collaboration, challenge them to think beyond meetings and updates. True collaboration means breaking down walls, embracing diverse contributions, and working together in ways that transcend traditional boundaries. Only then can we tap into the collective intelligence of our teams and achieve greatness together.” 

- Shubham Sharma, Senior Software Quality Engineer, Qantas

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4. Lean Takes Center Stage

Key Highlights:

• Growing adoption of "NoEstimates" and forecasting approaches over traditional estimation
• Emphasis on smaller, more frequent releases with clear business context
• Increased focus on flow efficiency and waste reduction in processes

The shift toward leaner practices is revolutionizing how teams approach delivery. Organizations are moving beyond story points and velocity metrics to focus on flow efficiency and cycle time. The "NoEstimates" movement isn't about abandoning predictability - it's about finding more reliable ways to forecast and deliver value with less overhead.

This shift toward leaner practices is complemented by a focus on smaller, frequent releases that tie directly to business outcomes.

Organizations are getting better at lean principles to identify and eliminate unnecessary steps in their processes, with a singular focus on value delivery. 

Expert take:

“Asking whether Lean is still relevant in 2025 is akin to questioning the relevance of continuous improvement itself. The answer is, of course, a resounding "YES!" However, the challenge lies not in Lean’s principles but in how effectively organizations implement and sustain their improvement efforts.

While many organizations adopt Lean methodologies, a significant gap remains between intention and execution. Common pitfalls include inadequate leadership commitment, failure to integrate Lean with organizational strategy, and lack of workforce engagement. Lean’s relevance hinges on addressing these challenges head-on by embedding continuous improvement into the DNA of an organization.”

- Patrick Adams, CEO and Executive Lean Coach, Lean Solutions

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5. Quality and Technical Excellence Make A Resurgence

Key Highlights:

• Renewed emphasis on XP practices and technical craftsmanship
• Greater focus on sustainable testing strategies combining automated and human testing
• Continuous refactoring and technical excellence becoming primary concerns

Technical excellence is back in focus. While the past decade saw many organizations chase velocity at the expense of quality, engineering teams are rediscovering that there's no sustainable agility without solid technical practices.

Extreme Programming (XP) practices, once considered too rigorous for many organizations, are seeing renewed adoption. And modern tooling has made these practices more accessible, but they still require disciplined engineering culture to implement effectively.

Testing strategies are evolving too, blending automated and manual strategies to ensure robust and adaptive systems. Advancements in testing technology—including AI-assisted tools—are enabling faster and more accurate testing processes, so quality remains a priority even in accelerated delivery cycles. 

Continuous refactoring has become a primary concern, especially as organizations deal with the technical debt accumulated during rapid pandemic-era digital transformations. Teams are finding that regular system evolution isn't just about clean code - it's about maintaining the ability to respond quickly to business needs without sacrificing stability.

Expert take:

“For me, XP is at the core of Continuous Delivery, which is also the foundation on which DevOps is built.

I don't think that you can achieve Continuous Delivery without the kind of polyglot collaboration between all of the parties involved in creating software. How can you Continuously Deliver if the Ops team, security team, testing team, dev team, or product team is in a silo? You can't.

I think that both of those approaches represent a genuine paradigm shift - it's a complete change in focus, not only about how to practice software development but really what software development is. I think of it much more in terms of it being this exploratory process of discovery and part of the way in which we organize our work is to enable that - to allow ourselves the freedom to discover things, learn new things, change direction, and discard the bad things.” 

- Dave Farley, Independent Software Developer and Consultant, Founder and Director of Continuous Delivery Ltd.

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6. Business Agility Extends Beyond IT

Key Highlights:

• Expansion of Agile principles beyond software development into broader business operations
• Integration of product-oriented thinking across organizations
• Focus on measurable business outcomes and value metrics

The walls between IT and business are finally crumbling. While software teams have been practicing Agile for years, we're now seeing these principles take root across entire organizations. A significant milestone in this evolution is the recent acquisition of Agile Alliance by Product Management Institute - a clear signal of the broadening demand for agile skills and expertise across different business functions.

Teams are adopting product-oriented thinking throughout the organization and focusing on measurable business outcomes rather than just project deliverables.

The data backs this up: while IT teams lead with 70% Agile adoption, product and R&D teams aren't far behind. Even traditional business operations and marketing teams are embracing agile practices, with adoption rates of 28% and 20% respectively. This shift is driven by necessity - in a world where market conditions change rapidly, no department can afford to operate in quarterly planning cycles anymore.

Consider Unilever's experience: By applying agile practices beyond their tech departments into marketing and product development teams, they've reduced time-to-market for new products by nearly 30%. This agility has enabled them to respond more effectively to changing consumer demands, particularly during times of economic uncertainty.

Expert take:

“Agile innovation has revolutionized the software industry, which has arguably undergone more rapid and profound change than any other area of business over the past 30 years. Now it is poised to transform nearly every other function in every industry. At this point, the greatest impediment is not the need for better methodologies, empirical evidence of significant benefits, or proof that agile can work outside IT. It is the behavior of executives. Those who learn to lead agile’s extension into a broader range of business activities will accelerate profitable growth.” 

- Darrell Rigby, Jeff Sutherland, Hirotaka Takeuchi for Harvard Business Review. 

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7. Agile Adapts to Remote and Hybrid Work

Key Highlights:

• Evolution of Agile practices to better support distributed and hybrid teams
• Development of new collaboration patterns for remote work
• Focus on asynchronous communication and documentation

Remote work has forced a fundamental rethinking of agile practices. The tools have evolved - Jira, Trello, and Slack are table stakes now - but the real innovation is happening in how teams structure their work and communication patterns to maintain the same level of engagement, communication, and velocity as in-person teams.

Distributed teams are developing new approaches to traditional ceremonies. Asynchronous standup updates combined with focused synchronous discussion time. Sprint planning split into async preparation and live refinement sessions. Retrospectives that blend individual reflection time with group synthesis.

Documentation, once seen as anti-agile, has found its place in the remote world. But it's not your grandfather's documentation - teams are using tools like Notion and Confluence to create living documents that evolve with their products. Architecture decision records (ADRs) and technical RFCs have become crucial tools for maintaining alignment across distributed teams.

Expert take:

“At one point, in-person face-to-face communication was the most effective way to communicate. This was still very true back in 2001 when Agile was defined, and this is why it was essential to document that in the Agile principles. However, the state of technology back then lacked the conductivity or capabilities to make remote possible, leaving workers desk-bound. The hardwired phone, desktop system, and limited email were what we had. So Agile worked to collocate teams and promoted in-person face-to-face meetings whenever possible in its first decade of existence. But that was 20 years ago.

For Agile, with today’s technology, we are not going against the intent of how we framed effective communications. On the contrary, the technology has helped remove the impediment that most large multinational and distributed teams were dealing with when adopting Agile — we can now have everybody face-to-face regardless of where they are in the world. Furthermore, Agile helps to give the hybrid workplace a set of values and principles to help the hybrid work environment prosper.”

• Ray Arell, Founder and Executive Director, nuAgility

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8. Economic Influences Shape Practice

Key Highlights:

• Greater emphasis on cost-effectiveness and demonstrable ROI
• Focus on π-shaped people and efficient team structures
• Renewed attention to productivity and outcome-based metrics

Economic realities are pushing organizations to rethink their agile implementations. The focus has shifted from process purity to practical outcomes. Teams are being asked not just to deliver features, but to demonstrate their impact on business metrics - aka cost-effectiveness and return on investment.

Value stream mapping has moved from theory to practice, as organizations work to understand and optimize their delivery pipelines. The most effective teams are those that can connect their technical metrics (lead time, deployment frequency, MTTR) to business outcomes (revenue impact, customer satisfaction, market share).

The investment in T-shaped individuals - those who combine deep expertise with broad capabilities - is proving particularly valuable in this environment. These team members can adapt to changing needs and help reduce the coordination overhead that often plagues specialized teams.

Expert take:

"Looking ahead, I anticipate a renewed emphasis on certainty, optimization, and individual performance metrics. This shift seems likely because developing self-management is challenging—it's a slow process for many and often tempting to fall back into familiar command-and-control habits. Unfortunately, such a trend risks diverting focus from user-centric goals and outcome-based measures, potentially undermining the core principles that have made Agile so impactful. To address this, I believe the Agile community must strengthen its foundation, focusing on creating working products and by leveraging tools like Evidence-Based Management to help measure the right metrics and progress indicators that some organizations require."

- Simon Bourk, Professional Scrum Trainer, Master Integral Coach TM

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Looking Ahead

As we move into 2025, we're seeing the emergence of a more mature, nuanced approach to agility. Organizations are moving beyond the framework debates and certification chases to focus on what truly matters: building high-quality software that delivers business value efficiently.

The most successful teams will be those that can:

• Maintain technical excellence while adapting to changing business needs
• Balance autonomy with accountability through clear outcome metrics
• Leverage automation and AI without losing sight of craftsmanship
• Scale agile practices through organization-wide adoption
• Adapt their practices to support distributed, async-first work patterns

The future of Agile isn't about choosing between SAFe and Scrum, or debating the merits of estimation. It's about building engineering organizations that can consistently deliver value while maintaining the technical excellence needed for long-term sustainability. The teams that get this right won't just survive the next wave of change - they'll lead it.

Exciting times indeed.

Picture this all-too-common scenario: Your teams have been working diligently across multiple departments. They've successfully developed an MVP following perfect agile practices. The burndown charts are beautiful. The collaboration was seamless. The code is clean, tested, and ready to ship.

There's just one small problem – when you release it to your users... crickets. No one uses it. No one cares.

Sound familiar? You're not alone.

The Build Trap: A Silent Killer of Agile Success

Many agile teams find themselves trapped in a cycle of building features that don't deliver real value to their customers. They've fallen into what product strategy expert Melissa Perri calls "the build trap" – focusing on outputs (like features shipped) rather than outcomes (like solving real customer problems).

As Charlie Hill, VP of Strategic Design at IBM, explains:

"The most important question for you to ask is, can you accomplish an outcome that a user would recognize as better than the other options available? And can you get it to that user before your competition does? Because if you can't, it's going to be a struggle. If you spend too much time measuring internal velocity, you risk falling in love with a very efficient process but losing sight of the market."

Understanding the Value Exchange System

At the heart of successful agile development lies a fundamental concept: the Value Exchange System.

It works like this:

1. On one side, customers have specific problems, wants, and needs
2. On the other side, businesses create products or services to resolve these problems
3. Customers realize value only when their problems are genuinely solved
4. Only then do they provide value back to the business through loyalty, revenue, and advocacy

This reciprocal relationship forms the foundation of customer-centric agile. When teams focus on solving real customer problems rather than just shipping features, they create a virtuous cycle benefiting both the customer and the business.

Why Traditional Agile Often Misses the Mark

Agile methodologies were born from a desire to be more responsive to change and deliver value faster. But somewhere along the way, many teams lost sight of the ultimate goal – delighting customers. They became more focused on:

• Sprint velocity over customer impact
• Story points over solved problems
• Feature completion over user satisfaction
• Process efficiency over market success

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, puts it perfectly:

"There are many ways to center a business. You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused... But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of day one vitality."

The Six Pillars of Customer-Centric Agile

To embrace truly customer-centric agile development, teams need to adopt these fundamental principles:

1. Empathy First

• Get out from behind your desk and observe customers in their natural environment
• Listen to their frustrations and celebrate their wins
• See the world through their eyes before attempting solutions

2. Outcomes Over Outputs

• Focus on the impact your features create, not just their completion
• Measure success by customer problems solved
• Ask "How does this improve our users' lives?" before "How fast can we ship it?"

3. Continuous Discovery

• Make learning about customers an ongoing process, not a one-time event
• Regularly conduct user interviews and analyze usage data
• Keep testing assumptions and validating decisions

4. Experimentation Mindset

• Embrace uncertainty and be willing to test assumptions
• Use prototypes and MVPs to validate ideas before full commitment
• Learn from failures as much as successes

5. Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Ensure everyone on the team has access to customer insights
• Break down silos between product, development, and user research
• Make customer understanding everyone's responsibility

6. Rapid Iteration

• Be prepared to pivot quickly based on customer feedback
• Maintain technical practices that enable fast response to learning
• Value adaptation over following a plan

Getting Started with Customer-Centric Agile

While the principles are straightforward, implementing them requires careful thought and systematic approach.

Begin by assessing your current state. Take time to understand how your team currently gathers customer insights. Look at your feature adoption rates and usage patterns. Most importantly, examine how you measure success - are you tracking outputs like velocity, or outcomes like customer impact?

Next, focus on building customer empathy across your entire team. Schedule regular customer conversations - aim for at least one per sprint. Create opportunities for team members from all functions to observe customers using your product in their natural environment. Make sharing customer insights a regular part of your agile ceremonies, not just something that happens in product meetings.

Finally, start adjusting your metrics to reflect your customer-centric focus. While velocity and story points have their place, they shouldn't be your primary measures of success. Begin tracking customer outcomes and impact. Monitor feature adoption and engagement. Pay attention to how your work affects customer satisfaction and retention.

Want to dive deeper into implementing these principles?

We've written a comprehensive guide that does just that and provides detailed frameworks for implementation.

In "Understanding Customer Value in Agile," you'll find practical techniques, real-world case studies, and step-by-step guides for transforming your agile practice. Each chapter builds on these foundational principles to help you create truly customer-centric development processes.

Get your free copy today.

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Weaving alignment and empathy into team dynamics can revolutionize software delivery. So why aren't we all doing that?

It's a real challenge for organizations with numerous teams contributing to complex software, to achieve real alignment and consensus on user needs. But it's one well worth pursuing. Striking a balance between alignment on business goals and customer empathy ensures that the software your teams are developing truly resonates with users and fulfills those business goals.

Why Alignment Matters in Agile Programs

Alignment is more than just goal setting across teams. It's about connecting workflows, acknowledging challenges, and crafting solutions that encompass everyone’s perspectives, including the needs of your users. As Tony Camacho shared on the Easy Agile Podcast:

"Alignment isn’t just about goals—it’s about understanding each other’s workflows, needs, and challenges to create solutions that work for everyone."

This comprehensive strategic alignment is crucial for steering teams in the same direction. In large enterprises, team alignment means that agile release trains can function cohesively, and strategic business goals are successfully translated across diverse teams and departments. Strong alignment empowers cross-functional teams to sustain momentum and unity at scale, even as the product roadmap evolves. For agile release trains, effective alignment means that everyone is doing their part, pulling in the same direction, and delivering successful software.  

Customer Empathy and User-Centric Development

Customer empathy is the cornerstone of aligning business goals with user needs and developing software that delivers a seamless user experience. It's about getting to know your users, their needs, and their experience with your product so that you can create better solutions for them.

"The key to meeting user needs is empathy. When teams deeply understand their users, every product decision naturally aligns with providing value."

Tony Comacho

This ethos fuels decision-making and design that prioritizes user needs and values over functional deliverables. It's great to build and release something, but not-so-great if nobody uses it.  Agile leaders who embed empathy within their teams cultivate a customer-driven culture, resulting in software solutions that address genuine challenges and delight their audience.

Empathy enhances the process of gathering requirements, conducting user testing, and embracing iterative design. Combined with effective agile program management, empathy aligns business goals with user expectations, and is a great way to improve engagement with your software and reduce churn, paving the way for successful software delivery and user retention.

Building Clarity for Effective Collaboration

Building impactful software at scale demands effective collaboration and clarity.

"Effective collaboration is rooted in clarity. Teams need to feel supported by having a shared vision and understanding of the product journey."

Tony Comacho

Cross-team alignment revolves around establishing a unified vision and setting clear goals and expectations across the agile release train. For enterprise agile solutions that support PI Planning and Product Roadmapping, upholding this clarity allows large teams to work independently yet cohesively, ensuring a targeted approach to addressing both business and user needs.

How to Achieve Agile Alignment at Scale

To encourage team alignment around user needs in your organization:

• Invest in User Research & Design: Start talking to your users; and keep talking to them. Implement user-focused design practices, gathering insights from users throughout the development stages to effectively align user needs and business goals.
• Share Vision and Goals: Regularly communicate with your teams about business objectives and user needs, ensuring they are central to your agile program.
• Use Alignment Tools and Frameworks: Leverage agile tools that help you track objectives and development milestones to ensure team alignment and cross-team collaboration. Make goals and priorities easily accessible for all your teams.
• Encourage Transparent Communication: Cultivate an environment where feedback crosses team boundaries, maintaining cross-team alignment and empathy.‍

The Benefits of Alignment and Empathy in Software Delivery

Better outcomes for your software start when business goals are aligned with user needs. Programs that place strategic agile alignment and customer empathy at the forefront, not only meet user expectations but improve the value they offer to their customers. With good agile program management, the outcome is a streamlined, effective agile release train that consistently delivers exceptional software solutions. Which is what we all want, right?

As you work towards better alignment in your agile program, nurturing empathy and clarity can unlock significant gains in satisfaction for your users and for your teams, which is great news for the overall success of your program.

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🎧 Want to hear more from Tony? Listen to The power of team alignment on the Easy Agile Podcast.

At Easy Agile, we’re constantly looking for new ways to improve our products, and one of the ways we foster innovation is through Dash Days—a focused period where our team steps away from daily tasks to experiment, explore, and reimagine how our tools can better serve customers.

During our most recent Dash Days, we took a fresh look at the user interface of two of our flagship products, Easy Agile TeamRhythym and Easy Agile Programs. The goal was to enhance interaction and discoverability, so users can experience the full value of our tools without unnecessary complexity.

Here’s a glimpse into our thought process, challenges, and the exciting solutions we explored.

The challenge

As Easy Agile TeamRhythym and Easy Agile Programs have evolved, we’ve introduced powerful features designed to give users more control and flexibility. However, as new capabilities have been added, the interface has become more elaborate. For us, this presents an opportunity—an opportunity to take a step back, simplify the experience, and help users unlock more of what our products offer.

To address this, we brought people from across the business together to brainstorm how we could improve the experience in both products. Through these sessions, we identified a few core opportunities:

• Discoverability: How do we make it easier for users to find and use the powerful features built into our tools?
• Visibility: What’s the best way to surface the right information and features when users need them? 
• Consistency: How do we create a more uniform experience within and across our products to make navigation intuitive?

Armed with these insights, we then set out to explore solutions tailored to each product’s unique challenges. 

A more personalized experience with Easy Agile Programs

For Programs, we focused on three “how might we” questions to reframe our challenges into opportunities: 

1. How might we create more focus on the actions users are trying to complete?
2. How might we make navigation more intuitive and easy?
3. How might we help users with more context about where they are in the app at any given screen? 

Out of the many solutions we explored, the one that got us the most excited was the idea of an Easy Agile Programs Home Screen—a personalized dashboard designed to guide users based on where they are in their planning cycle. 

This home screen could adapt based on where users are in their journey, offering relevant guidance and actions.

• For new users, the home screen could provide clear onboarding steps and easy access to help, so they can get started quickly and confidently.
• For experienced users, it could offer insights and key actions related to their progress, so they can stay focused on what matters most. Users might even see data summarizing their accomplishments, which makes it easier to share successes with their teams.

Whether someone’s brand new to the product or deep into execution, the home screen could be a great way to guide and coach our users—helping them answer questions like, "What should I be doing next?" or "What extra value am I missing out on?". 

A more focused interface for Easy Agile TeamRhythm

For TeamRhythym, our three key “how might we” questions were:

• How might we provide more focus within the User Story Map during sprint planning?
• How might we improve the discoverability of issues without epics?
• How might we enhance the layout to highlight key features and improve overall usability? 

With these questions in mind, we explored a range of ideas to simplify sprint planning and make it easier for users to prep, plan, and review their work, whether they’re using Scrum or Kanban.

Sprint planning can sometimes feel overwhelming when you have multiple sprints competing for attention. To help users focus, so we explored the idea of introducing a focused view during sprint planning. 

• This would allow users to zoom in on a specific sprint and the backlog alone, while collapsing others. 
• Each issue would have its own row in the detailed view, and users can drag and drop either an entire row or drag individual issues to quickly rank them based on priorities.
• The sprint view will also hide epics that don’t have linked issues in the current sprint, giving users a cleaner view of what’s relevant to their current work.

We also looked at ways to enhance the User Story Map interface to bring the most useful tools and features to the forefront. By improving how key functionality is presented, we’re helping teams quickly access what they need, when they need it, enabling them to stay productive without interruption.

This way, we can create a smoother, more focused experience for teams using TeamRhythm, so they can focus on what’s in front of them without being distracted by everything else.

Your turn. What do you think?

At Easy Agile, we’re always thinking about what comes next. 

These ideas aren’t on our official roadmap just yet, but they’re the kind of innovations we’re excited to explore.

If you think these changes would improve your experience with Easy Agile TeamRhythm and Easy Agile Programs, let us know! Your feedback helps us decide what to prioritize, so we can continue building tools that truly make a difference for your teams.

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The 17th State of Agile Report shared that 93% of executives thought that their teams could do the same amount of work in half the time, if their teams collaborated better.

That's quite a statistic. We’ll leave it up to you to decide whether this reflects a lack of efficiency due to poor collaboration, or a disconnect between leadership expectations and the realities faced by development teams.

What we do know is that improving team collaboration has benefits and that improved collaboration is a key benefit of effective agile practices.

So if you think your team could work more effectively, here are six tips for improving team collaboration that we think will make your working life better, and help you deliver for your customers.

1. Agile Teams Are Cross-Functional

Cross-functional teams are the backbone of agile collaboration. It's Agile 101:

The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

Ideally, your agile team should be able to deliver work independently. The skills and expertise of your team should allow you to handle diverse tasks without creating dependencies on other teams. You can take ownership of the software you're delivering.

The benefit of organizing into cross-functional teams is a greater shared understanding of your project, where you can each see how the pieces fit together. This type of collaboration supports the efficient flow of work and ensures that knowledge and skills are consistently shared.

2. Take an Iterative Approach

Or to put it another way, make it easier to fail fast, so your team can learn why, and correct your course. By breaking down large projects into manageable increments, your team can focus on delivering small, functional parts of working software at regular intervals. This approach goes hand-in-hand with continual feedback from users, ensuring that issues are uncovered quickly and dealt with just as fast. This shared team focus on user feedback, and the shared purpose and collaboration that comes with it, is a key benefit of agile development.

3. Maintain Regular and Transparent Communication

Daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and planning meetings are all designed to foster regular and clear communication. You and your team should see these meetings as an opportunity to share ideas, discuss progress and blockers, and collaborate. If your daily stand-up is nothing more than a shopping list of tasks, then you're doing it wrong.

If your daily stand-up is nothing more than a shopping list of tasks, then you're doing it wrong.

Someone who has wasted too much time in shopping-list meetings.

Beyond team meetings, clear communication is important anywhere the details of your work are shared. Agile tools like Easy Agile TeamRhythm provide a central platform for prioritizing work and tracking progress. With a central source of truth that everyone can access to understand goals, priorities, and team commitment, collaboration can be more effective, keeping the team aligned and focused.

4. Conduct Team Retrospectives

Hot take: regular retrospectives are the most important agile practice your team can adopt.

Team retrospectives provide a structured opportunity to reflect on your work and discuss how it can be done better next time. This is team-led improvement because you and your team are in the driver's seat. Encouraging honest and open discussions during retrospectives helps build trust among team members and fosters a collaborative mindset. By continuing to work on processes and behaviors, you and your team can improve your performance over time and make your working life better.

5. Use Collaboration Tools

The right tools can make a big difference in team collaboration. The best tools provide a reliable source of truth that the whole team can access, in a place where the whole team will access it. It's a simple concept; a shared understanding of the work is supported by shared and willing access to the same information.

Choose a tool that makes it easy for you and your team to access information and keep it updated. If you're already working in Jira, an integration like Easy Agile TeamRhythm provides a better view of your work in a story map format, with goals, objectives, and team commitment all made clear. Team retrospective boards are attached to each sprint (or spun up as required for Kanban teams) so you have your team-led ideas for improvement tightly connected to the work in Jira.

No matter which tool you choose, make sure it will facilitate better alignment, streamline your workflows, and provide a clear picture of roadblocks and progress. By using collaboration tools effectively, your team stays organized, focused, and connected, no matter where each member is located.

6. Build a Positive Team Culture

It may sound obvious, but a positive team culture is essential for effective collaboration. Creating an environment where team members feel valued, respected, and motivated, encourages the psychological safety they need to share their great ideas, learn from missteps, and collaborate more effectively with their colleagues.

High-performing teams recognize the achievements of others, share constructive feedback, and support practices that lead to a healthy work-life balance. Make it regular, and keep it authentic. A positive culture not only improves team dynamics but also boosts overall productivity and job satisfaction.

Successful Team Collaboration

Effective collaboration can be the difference between your team achieving their goals, or falling short. By embracing agile practices like the regular communication that comes from agile planning meetings, to the learnings that come from taking an interactive approach to development, and creating time for team-led improvement with retrospectives, you can seriously boost your team dynamics.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm Supports Team Collaboration

Easy Agile TeamRhythm is designed to make your agile practices more accessible and effective, helping your team plan, prioritize, and deliver work with better alignment and clarity.

Built around a story map for visualizing work and retrospective boards that encourage team-led improvement, TeamRhythm facilitates sprint and release planning, dependency management, backlog management, user story mapping, and retrospectives.

Tight integration with Jira makes Easy Agile TeamRhythm a reliable source of truth, no matter where you and your team members are located.

Watch a demo, learn about pricing, and try for yourself in our sandbox. Visit the Easy Agile TeamRhythm Features and Pricing page for more.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm

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Should you form cross-functional agile teams?

In large, conventional organizations, multiple departments manage specific functions. Marketing, finance, HR and sales teams work in silos, often focused on their own outcomes rather than being primarily driven by the customer and the market.

Yet even before the pandemic hit, organizations recognized the need to manage change and make decisions quicker than ever before to keep up with competitors. Along came covid, and those needs vastly intensified.

To thrive in an uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, many organizations are moving away from silos and racing towards enterprise agility, forming networks of empowered cross-functional agile teams.

But the change from siloed departments to agile teams means change, and change can be difficult.

In this article we weigh up the pros and cons of each operating model.

Key points

• Communication, collaboration, and employee engagement are often better in cross-functional teams.
• By iteratively testing solutions quickly, cross-functional teams can boost productivity, cut costs, and deliver better results.
• There may be bumps along the road before a newly formed cross-functional team matures and reaches its potential, but you can take steps to help them succeed.

"The two most urgent reasons for adopting Agile are the speed and flexibility required by working environments that continue to be bother unpredictable and volatile." State of Agile Report

What are cross-functional agile teams?

Cross-functional agile teams (sometimes known as cross-functional scrum teams) are a key element in any organization’s agile development.

The team brings together people from across the business with different expertise and skillsets. Together, the team works toward a common goal.

Usually made up of 5 to 11 people, the team defines, builds, tests and delivers projects in sprints or iterations.

"The ability for the team to support each other, collaborate with each other and align to the goal are wonderful ways to measure agile."

William Rojas, Adaptavist

What are the benefits of cross-functional agile teams?

There are many benefits of having cross-functional agile teams in your organization. Here’s our top five.

1. Cross-functional teams communicate and collaborate better

Siloed teams can spend many hours a week in unproductive meetings as they negotiate resources and manage conflicting priorities. On the other hand, Agile teams align on goals and objectives from the beginning of each project. This helps make their subsequent meetings brief, productive and transparent. Each person is accountable and empowered to share progress and solve problems. As a result, agile teams are often more engaged and passionate about their work.

2. Cross-functional teams are responsive

In silos, each team is responsible for an aspect of a project with limited visibility into what other teams are doing. This can lead to blockers or conflicting priorities, creating rework and delays. They may also find they lack specific skills as the project goes on, leaving teams rushing to fill the gaps and causing further delays. Moving to agile teams means having the necessary skills and resources available, as well as identifying conflicting priorities and blockers early. This helps agile teams rapidly iterate, continually improve, and deliver results.

3. Cross-functional teams are innovative

In siloed organizations, employees can get caught up in their departmental group think. The limited exposure to other teams makes employees less likely to question established practises or suggest improvements. In cross-functional agile teams, perspectives from people across multiple teams are shared from the outset. Because people from different skills approach problems in different ways, this can lead to great ideas and business innovation.

4. Cross-functional teams help the business adapt to change

With their iterative approach and frequent communication, cross-functional agile teams can problem solve and change directions fast. They don’t face the renegotiation, reprioritization, and delays that can hold siloed teams back. Instead, businesses with cross-functional teams can better respond to changing market and customer needs.

5. Cross-functional teams consistently focus on the big picture

Cross-functional agile teams understand the ‘why’ behind the work they’re doing, and they come together with a focus on the customer experience. This shared focus dissolves the barriers between the different functions within the team. Deliverables are mapped to high-level business objectives which deliver greater value to the end-user.

What are the downsides of cross-functional agile teams?

If cross-functional teams are done right, there really are no downsides. What organization doesn’t want increased collaboration, innovation, customer focus and faster delivery?

That said, there can be bumps and conflict as people learn to adapt to the agile mindset – and this is where cross-functional teams can fail to deliver. Here are some of the common challenges large organizations face when moving to cross-functional agile teams:

• Cultural resistance with people reluctant to let go of the old way of doing things.
• No clear accountability, leaving teams unable to make quick decisions and people clinging to a sense of ownership over their work.
• Lack of alignment with goals which can lead to misunderstandings, rework, and potential conflict.

With this in mind, it may take a little time and support for a newly formed agile team to find its wings.

"Often the way teams become agile is just by doing it, trying it, and continuing to evolve and committing to that approach. So, if you haven't started - just get started. That's often the biggest struggle."

William Rojas, Adaptavist

The first step is to just get started

Being agile means changing an organization’s processes and people structure, and it can seem like a lot of hard work. But if businesses don’t transform so they can capture the productivity, speed, customer, and employee engagement benefits; they’re at risk of being left behind.

Cross-functional agile teams can be your key adapting fast and getting ahead. There’s no doubt they can deliver outstanding results – if you take the right steps to set them up for success.

For concrete advice on how to drive successful cross-functional agile teams and avoid failure, sign up for our free on-demand webinar - ‘Do’s and Don'ts of Agile Teams with Adaptavist’.

The webinar will take a deep dive into the SAFe agile team together with our partner and SAFe expert Adaptavist.

Keen to scale agile and form successful cross-functional teams?

Come along to a free, 40-minute on-demand webinar to find out how

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What is User Story Mapping? And more importantly, WHY would you want to run a story mapping session with your team?

Let’s start off by talking about the origins of User Story Mapping.

It’s now a common practice in agile software development, but it wasn’t always that way.

If you have experience with a Scrum or Kanban backlog, you've likely run into the dreaded flat backlog.

Why Story Mapping

In its simplest form, a flat product backlog is a laundry list of stuff 'to do' that will ultimately provide some form of value to your users/customers. At least we hope so.

Many of us have contributed to making these backlogs longer and longer, and they inevitably become overwhelming.

Regardless of whether the team pulls work from the backlog one-by-one or groups it into sprints, prioritizing work in a flat backlog comes with its challenges.

The flat backlog is a 2 dimensional view. It’s like a shopping list, which doesn’t provide context for the work.

Enter, the User Story Map! The concept of a User Story Map was born out of a desire to kill the flat backlog and create a more holistic, customer centric overview of our work.

A user story map is a visualisation of the journey a customer takes with a product, and includes the activities and tasks they would typically complete.

Usually conducted at the beginning of a Project, a user story mapping session is done with the sole purpose of creating a shared understanding amongst the team of who your customers are and how you should focus your time working on stories that provide the most value for them.

You can do this on a whiteboard with sticky notes, or you can do it in Jira using our app, Easy Agile TeamRhythm.

How to build a user story map

To create a visualisation of the journey a customer takes with a product, start by identifying each stage, and then list the activities and tasks the customer would typically complete for each.

Next, begin to associate each item of work in the backlog with its corresponding touchpoint in the customer journey.

At this point in a User Story Mapping session, a matrix should begin to emerge, containing a list of tasks or stories to which the team has committed to delivering, organized according to the steps in the customer journey.

From there, the map is divided into the time blocks the team uses to plan their work. For example, in sprint 1, the team might commit to 5 user stories, which are attached to 3 epics.

This helps build understanding of how progress will be made against larger pieces of work.

Why user story mapping is better than a flat backlog

Connecting the work in the backlog to the customer journey in this way begins to answer key questions like:

• WHY are we building this?
• WHO are we building this for?
• WHAT value will it provide them?
• WHEN do we expect to deliver this?

User story mapping essentially converts the 2D flat backlog in a three-dimensional view, because it gives us a way to say, “ok I’m currently working on building this user story, and I can visualise what piece of the customer journey this will be directly impacting AND we know when it will be delivered.”

Also, by putting the focus on the user, a story map ensures that the backlog contains work that add real value for the customer by helping them achieve their goals.

How to run a user story mapping session

Now that you have a better understanding of the value of a User Story Map, let's look at how to create one. First, you’ll need to set up a Story Mapping session with your team.

But whatever you do, don’t make it an open invite. This is really important, because if you don’t have the right people in the room then it won’t be effective.

People you could consider inviting are:

The product owner for the team

• a tech lead
• a user experience designer
• a marketing lead
• a data analyst and,
• someone from customer support

It’s also important to set some ground rules for the session.

There should be one person facilitating the session. A good practice is to involve a Product Manager from another team to run the session.

Depending on the scope of the story mapping session you may want to take a whole day or spread it out over a couple of days.

The scope all depends on how big your team is and how many user stories you need to add to your map.

There should be no phones or laptops out except for the facilitator.

Also, everyone in the room should be familiar with the user stories being discussed.

Now that you know the benefits of a user story map and what to consider when setting up the mapping session with your team, start thinking about who you can invite to participate in and facilitate the session.

How well do you know your customers?

🧐 Well, you know they use your product…

🧑‍💻 You sometimes write user stories for them, but not based an any particular persona…

🕵️ You did talk to a customer once; it was interesting, but now you aren’t sure where those notes went…

So that you can provide value to your customers, you really do need to get to know them well. What are the goals, motivations, and pain points that bring them to your product?

This is pretty important stuff, so let’s take a look at 7 reasons why it’s good to have a healthy level of customer obsession in your agile teams...

1. Agile and customer value go hand-in-hand

Agile is all about the customer. At least, it should be.

It’s right there in the first two agile principles:

(1) Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

(2) Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

Manifesto For Agile Software Development

If you want to take an agile approach, you’ll definitely be putting your users at the heart of your development.

2. Each sprint should deliver a better product, and more value, for your customers

One reason why agile should (in theory - we’ll expand on this shortly) benefit your customers is that every two to four weeks, you’ll ship something new. It may not be a whole new feature each time, but every update, UI improvement, and even every bug fix is delivery of incremental improvement.

This is kind of a big deal when you compare it to traditional project management approaches.

With a waterfall approach, customers could be waiting months or even years before seeing any changes. In many cases, by the time updates were released, customers, technologies, and requirements had moved on.

But by taking an agile approach, you:

• Consider and incorporate user requested updates, features, and changes at any time
• Regularly add new features to a roadmap and incrementally roll them out in weeks or months, rather than years
• Can see early on if something’s not working, because you invite your users to report issues and provide feedback right away
• Show your users how the product is developing and growing
• Keep your product moving forward, and the customer is moving forward with it
• Grow the value your product provides to your customers over time.

However, it’s important to note that all of these really awesome benefits only apply if you’re prioritising your backlog and choosing features with your customers’ best interests at heart.

3. Agile teams need to know what’s valuable to their customers

“There is a chasm between the output of a team and successful outcomes for their customers. And the success of a team is measured by outcomes, not code.”

Nick Muldoon, CEO and Co-Founder, Easy Agile

Your customers have their own priorities, and they won’t align with the priorities of your business unless you make your customers the primary concern of your business.

Your developers likely want to work on projects that they find exciting or fulfilling, so the best way to motivate your agile teams is by building empathy with the people they’re building for. The most successful teams get a kick out of delivering the features that matter most to their customers. Because if you’re not solving their most important problems, your customers will find someone else who will solve them.

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4. Customer focus leads to better quality products

When you’re obsessed with your customers, you deliver products that actually matter.

Your whole business, from leadership, to engineering, to HR and Marketing; all need to stay focussed on the people that your business is aiming to attract. When your development teams understand your customers and develop with them in mind, there’s a much better chance that they’ll build the right things at the right time for the right people. And this is critical to the success of your product and organisation.

It’s also a great way to avoid building bloated products with unnecessary features.

5. An agile customer focus is better for planning and prioritising

The worst backlogs are huge ‘to-do’ lists; task focussed and likely to be out of date. The best backlogs however, align with the customer journey, are informed by feedback from your customers, and attempt to tackle their greatest pain points.

Without a solid understanding of your customers to inform your backlog, you could end up planning sprints, versions or even entire increments that don’t deliver anything useful or move the product forward for users. And that’s a pretty costly risk.

6. Customer feedback makes agile teams better

Teams who are obsessed with customers love getting customer feedback, whether it’s via customer interviews, surveys or just having a chat about their experience.

Customer feedback is incredibly powerful because it can help you:

• Understand your customers - Know what their biggest problems are and what they care about most
• Motivate your agile team - Help your team understand the problems they’re solving, the difference they’re making, and that their work is meaningful
• Spot trends and patterns - Ensure your product adapts to what’s in demand right now and what your customers will need in the future
• Make better products - Find out what’s not working so you can fix it
• Track your progress - See whether customers are happier with your product over time
• Stay relevant - Because products and companies that solve problems stick around long-term
• Get buy in - When your customers are involved in the process, they’ll feel more committed to the product, which can reduce churn
• Improve retention - Reduce churn and keep your customers for longer when you incorporate their feedback and ideas into your product
• Make data-informed decisions - Stop relying on your assumptions and let the data drive your strategy

So customer feedback is obviously awesome, but what do you actually DO with it? How do you share it with the team and turn it into actions? Well, that’s where user story mapping comes in.

7. Agile user story mapping is all about the customer

Most agile teams run user story mapping sessions to discuss what functions and features are needed in the product. User stories maps are a visual tool for customer focused development, ensuring your customer journey stays front and center throughout development.

This is where customer feedback comes into play. When your team can access a wealth of feedback from users, they can write user stories informed by real data. This gives them a much better chance of prioritizing features that will add value to users right away. Faster time-to-value. Sounds great right?

This makes backlog prioritization and sprint or version planning so much simpler, because the whole team shares a picture of what is important to the people who use what they are building. The team knows what they should prioritise next.

Improving your customer-focus is a solid strategy.

If your team isn’t exactly obsessed with your customers, maybe it’s time to change that?

Because if you’re focusing on your customers, you’ll make more of the right decisions about what products, features, and requirements you need to work on. You may not get it right every time, but if you’re involving your customers, you’ll soon learn what doesn’t work. Your team will find it easier to make decisions, you’ll waste less time, and you’ll build a better product, that keeps getting better.

Win win.

---

Ready to take your customer focus to the next level?

Get our comprehensive playbook, "Understanding Customer Value in Agile." This practical guide shows you exactly how to:

• Conduct effective customer research through proven techniques like Gemba walks
• Create actionable personas that drive daily decisions
• Build feedback loops that inform your product strategy
• Implement a 90-day plan to transform your team's approach

Download the Customer Value Playbook.

Whether you're a Product Owner looking to improve prioritization or a developer wanting to make better implementation decisions, this guide provides the frameworks and techniques you need to put customer value at the heart of your Agile practice.

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What is a Scrum Master? The Scrum Master guides the daily Scrum in projects or software development to streamline processes as much as possible. This person applies agile methodologies to guide successful project outcomes.

If you want to become a Scrum Master, learn what defines this role. Explore its duties and how the servant leadership style supports carrying out the various responsibilities it involves.

Find out how the Scrum Master's role benefits product or project development. Finally, discover what qualifications you need to become a Scrum Master and what job types you can apply to complete your studies.

What is a Scrum Master’s role?

A Scrum Master's role is dynamic. They must be flexible and adapt to various circumstances, because the Scrum Master serves a vital role in managing projects.

Every product development project needs a different approach. The Scrum Master must adapt their approach to each position and even play the role of an agile coach at times.

Whatever role the Scrum Master takes on, they play a servant leader role (we’ll review what this is later). So, their responsibilities vary when guiding the team's progress.

Some ways that the Scrum Master works with team members and product owners include:

• Sprint planning with team members and product owners to check that everyone understands what needs to be done
• Solving issues such as work estimation, scope creep and over-committing to work volumes
• Holding daily standup meetings to discuss product issues, backlogs, and any other team member concerns
• Acting as a facilitator to limit blockers that hold the team back from completing iterations on time. The Scrum Master also handles any roadblocks by improving workflows
• Having sprint reviews that ensure team collaboration and helpful feedback
• Holding retrospectives to see how team members can improve
• Monitoring the Scrum board to ensure that all cards are current and that Jira and other software works properly
• Hosting individual meetings to get to know and help team members one-on-one
• Handling portfolio planning tools such as analyzing burndown charts. They use burndown charts and other tools as inputs into what the team needs to build and the cadence levels for their work.
• Making sure that the team members use agile guidelines in their projects. These guidelines help team members meet stakeholder needs.

At the end of the day, the Scrum Master champions the Scrum process for successful project outcomes.

Servant leadership

Part of answering the question, “What is a Scrum Master”? involves looking at leadership styles. These styles include bureaucratic, democratic, transactional, and many others. One style that fits well with the role of the Scrum Master is to be a servant leader, an approach that works well with small teams.

Servant leaders:

• Support a team spirit
• Share responsibility
• Share decision-making
• Focus on achievements instead of faults

Servant leaders find solutions which promote workflows and stakeholder satisfaction.

Scrum Master according to Scrum methodology

The Scrum Guide, written by Ken Schwaber, provides an excellent outline of the diverse responsibilities of the Scrum Master. Here are some of this person’s roles:

• Adopting the role of an agile coach to lead organizational transformation using the Scrum methodology
• Planning Scrum applications to help the organization understand how the new iterative workflow process works and adapt to changes
• Guiding leaders, managers, and other stakeholders in understanding the benefits and applications of the Scrum product development methodology
• Helping increase the Scrum team's productivity
• Collaborating with other organizational Scrum Masters within the organization to help team members adopt agile principles
• Promoting positive working relationships between team members, product owners, and other stakeholders
• Guiding sprint planning, daily stand-up meetings, sprint reviews, and product backlog items

Scrum Master challenges

While the Scrum Master supports a streamlined workflow, their job is not always as simple as it sounds. Here are some challenges they may encounter:

1. Change resistance

Scrum Masters’ concepts may be new to employees, so Scrum Masters can encounter resistance. Either way, the Scrum Master must create solutions to dealing with any resistance to change.

2. Lack of understanding

Not everyone will understand or even like agile processes. A good Scrum Master must overcome this and to help teams connect principles with practical implementation to assimilate agile practices.

3. Gaining leadership support

Scrum Masters can only do their work effectively if they have the full support of leadership. Scrum processes can be pretty challenging, which initially disrupts old processes, making transformation difficult.

Managers may be afraid that the Scrum Master will usurp their authority. Departments may not want to adapt their processes, but the Scrum Master must use agile coach techniques to overcome fears and unwillingness to adapt.

Unless the Scrum Master has the full buy-in of leadership, any change initiative will derail before it even starts.

How Scrum Master positions can work

Role rotation. Agile teams rotate the responsibility of this role between members. For example, each team member does admin tasks for each Scrum meeting.

Part-time role. The Scrum Master takes on additional responsibilities.

Full-time role. The Scrum Master takes on a dedicated, full-time role. They must have the experience to do this work and skillfully show the team how to apply agile practices.

Guiding many teams. A Scrum Master guides several development teams. They monitor the work progress for several teams.

Agile coach. This Scrum Master role involves coaching teams or other Scrum Masters.

If the Scrum Master role interests you, you should know that Scrum Master jobs are common, partly due to the popularity of the agile method.

Organizations often look for ways to improve product development. They want Scrum Masters to help guide the process to get products to the market quicker.

You can look on LinkedIn for positions for good Scrum Masters. Their research shows that these positions are in high demand, so you can improve your skills with Scrum Master certifications. Your prospects are diverse as you can work in manufacturing, health, government, education, and many others.

Scrum Masters can get a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) qualification. They can also be a Professional Scrum Master.

How to become a certified Scrum Master

Scrum.org offers various resources, including Scrum certifications and training. So, if you want to follow a career in agile methodologies and lead a Scrum team, you can become a CSM or a PSM. You can also opt to train through the Scrum Alliance, which has been operating since 2001.

Hundreds of thousands of Scrum Masters have attained qualifications through these organizations. Both provide recognizable certifications at various Scrum Master levels, so perhaps it's time to boost your career.

You can achieve a Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certificate from scrum.org. This is available at three different levels, including:

• The PSM I certificate. This certificate shows that students understand Scrum and its applications as per the Scrum Guide.
• The PSM II certificate is proof that you can apply the Scrum principles and practices in a complex real-work situation.
• PSM III certificate. This certificate shows that students have an in-depth understanding of Scrum Values and can apply Scrum principles and practices in complex environments and situations.

Anyone who wants to improve their career opportunities can sign up with Scrum Alliance to get their CSM certification. You can become a:

• Certified ScrumMaster (SCM). This certificate focuses on servant leaders and how to help the Scrum team work together to enact the Scrum framework.
• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO). This certificate is for anyone involved in the business aspect of projects. If you want to know more about product development, productivity, and meeting stakeholder needs, this one is ideal.
• Certified Scrum Developer (CSD). This certificate is good when you want to know how to apply techniques and tools to build great software products. You will learn how to apply iterative Scrum methods in this certification process.
• The Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) learns how to improve Agile methodology implementation in each project they guide.

Take your career up a notch.

Easy Agile provides a range of resources to help Scrum Masters achieve their agile methodology goals. In addition, you can access resources such as our learning hub and webinars to improve your skills.

Scrum Masters can also explore Easy Agile Programs for Jira to enhance the software development team’s experience. Another excellent resource is Easy Agile Scrum Workflow for Jira.

Enhance your Scrum Master role with resources that make your work easier by overcoming resistance to new learning curves.

It's common knowledge in the world of digital marketing and eCommerce that personalization results in higher conversion rates, more engaged users, and a better overall brand experience for your customers. What's less common is personalization strategies based on purchase history, user behavior, and psychographic patterns identified across your customer base — these are known as user segmentation.

That's just a fancy way of saying that segmentation groups your customers by how they act, think, and feel. If you can identify these patterns, you can begin to anticipate your customers' needs and build personalized marketing campaigns and user flows.

Let’s say you added a first name to an email. That’s a beginning, but there’s a lot more to personalization strategies than using proper names. Developing deeper insights through segmentation allows for a hyper-targeted marketing strategy and more engaged users.

We'll dive into the weeds of user segmentation, give you some segmenting ideas, and show you how you can incorporate user segments into your Jira projects to help with your Sprint and release planning.

Product managers use Jira to plan based on user segments

If you're in product management, you're responsible for creating an organized product roadmap that aligns with the business goals for that time period. Visualizing the target audience represented in each sprint helps ensure you stay focused on the right functionality to meet your goals.

Often, user personas and customer journey maps are created before user segmenting gets underway. Rich personas and detailed journey maps not only provide valuable information to user experience teams, marketers, and product teams. They are the foundation for building different user segments.

Apply user segments to each stage of your customers' lifecycle, starting with their first contact with your brand, through purchase, onboarding, product usage, and eventually to churn. When personalized through a customer journey stage, marketing campaigns and product user flows enrich your customers' experience, ultimately increasing your profits and impressing your boss.

Lucky for you, Jira can help you do that. Here are some simple ways you can use Jira to organize work by user groups:

• Use labels and corresponding card colors identifying specific user segments.
• Add a custom field as a lifecycle or market segment(s) identifier.
• Create separate Jira projects based on segments.

Easy Agile User Story Maps and Personas are Jira add-ons. These Jira add-on apps are specifically designed to integrate Personas and Easy Agile User Story Maps into your Jira environment.

These tools allow Product Owners to better visualize and plan Sprints and releases with the appropriate balance of user stories for each customer segment. Create a persona for each segment within Jira and you can filter your Story Map by Persona.

User segmentation is as simple or complex as you make it

If you're at the “first name” stage of personalization, you've taken the first step toward building a personalized brand. But now, let’s get started on some basic user segmentation.

Before we get started, you need to understand two principles behind customer segmentation:

1. There is an infinite number of ways to segment your customer population. You'll need to do a lot of testing to figure out which segments return the best results for you.
2. A single customer can belong to multiple user segments. Nope, this isn't going to be a clean, one-to-one matching of customers and groups. But don't worry — we'll give you some tips on how to keep your segments organized.

Let's start by getting on the same page with what we mean by a segment. A user segment is a collection of users who have something in common. That's it.

Take a look at some typical methods of segmenting a user base:

• Geographic segmentation
  • Country, region, state, city, or neighborhood
• Demographic segmentation
  • Gender, age, race, religion, marital status, or family size
• Behavioral segmentation
  • Past purchases, preferred device (phone, tablet, or desktop), responses to marketing campaigns, or in-app feedback contributions
• Psychographic segmentation
  • Lifestyles, beliefs, value systems, interests, or opinions

As you can tell from this list, customer segmentation requires a significant amount of customer data. You probably have a lot of geographic and behavioral data already in your CRM or analytics tool.

Collecting demographic and psychographic data requires you to get more creative. While some customers readily offer this information, others are not so willing to disclose their personal details. Enticing those users through survey completion discounts, promising a more personalized experience, and analyzing social media interactions are a few ways to get a more complete demographic and psychographic disclosure from your user base.

Advanced user segmentation strategies

Basic segmentation is pretty straightforward. Once you've got that down, you'll want to move on to more advanced segmentation techniques to increase your targeting and results. This is where segmentation gets fun.

With advanced user segments, you begin to combine customer attributes across segments. For example, you may create a segment of users from Brooklyn Heights who own a specific product and typically purchase from their phone.

Let's take that example a step further. Suppose next, you create a segment of users from Brooklyn Heights who bought a specific product in the last 14 days, made their last two purchases from their phone, and have never responded to an email campaign. This segment seems like a prime candidate for an SMS campaign. Without segmentation, how would you know?

Another more advanced segmentation strategy if you have multiple products is combining product ownership, purchase history, and affinity data to create segments predicting the next purchase behavior.

An example of product affinity data would be customers who bought Product A also bought Product B 83% of the time.

Then, have your analytics team figure out the typical time lapse between the purchase of Product A and Product B.

Now, build your segments based on customers that bought Product A but have not yet purchased Product B. Your segments will include users that purchased A in the last 30 days, 31-60 days ago, and more than 60 days ago. (Your data will tell you the real numbers based on purchase history patterns within your customer base.)

These segments are ready for everything from targeted campaigns to customers most likely to purchase Product B. Trust us, your boss is gonna love this stuff!

We hope you're starting to see how to get more specific and include more attributes as your segmentation strategy gets more complex and more targeted. We recommend you start generally gradually add complexity to your user segments.

Because your segments are basically filters through which you view your customers, the more you segment, the smaller your population becomes. Customizing a campaign or user experience flow for a population of 50 when you have 5 million customers just doesn't make sense. Gradually adding complexity will let you know when you've gone too far and your population is too small.

Quick tip: Derived versus explicit data

When it comes to specific data attributes for your user segments, don't forget to think about derived versus implicit data. Derived data is presumed based on other explicit data.

Let us explain. Say you are building a music app and one of your user segments is jazz music fans. If a customer completes a form and tells you she loves jazz music, you explicitly know that she is a jazz music fan.

However, if a customer hasn't given you that information, but her music purchase history includes repeated purchases of songs from jazz musicians, you can derive that she is probably a jazz fan.

Think of derived data as a way to combine explicit data that allows you to make some actionable assumptions.

Release the power of segmentation through Jira

By now, you can probably see that user segmentation creates richer personalization experiences for your customers, which garners higher profits and better retention. And with Jira at the top of Gartner's list of agile planning tools, you might be able to use these tips on creating a user segmentation strategy with Jira.

Remember the steps to maximizing your customer and market segmentation strategies:

1. Create rich personas and detailed customer journey maps.
2. Use personas, journey maps, and internal user data to build meaningful customer segments.
3. Build personal marketing campaigns and user experiences for specific user segments.

In Jira, you can visualize, organize, and plan your product work with your user segments in mind. Combined with a roadmap app, Jira is a great tool that allows you to measure and report on the value delivered by each of your user segments.

At Easy Agile, we live by our name — making agile easy is our mission. Go ahead and check out our Jira apps: Easy Agile Personas, Easy Agile User Story Maps, and a flexible Easy Agile Roadmaps.

Ceremonies are regular events held by Scrum teams. ‘Agile’ is a broad word describing a different way of working with shorter, time-boxed cycles for releases.

Under the broad umbrella of agile, Scrum is one of the most popular approaches that teams use to organise their work and releases.

Each short iteration of work in Scrum is referred to as a sprint. A sprint is normally a 2 week period where the team focuses on a small slice of work.

The idea is that everyone focuses on 1 slice of work. And that slice is to be completed and shipped to the customer within that same sprint.

Scrum can be broken down into a few important elements:

1. Roles
2. Artifacts
3. Ceremonies

This post will focus on the Scrum Ceremonies.

All of the 4 Scrum ceremonies help ensure the Scrum team stay focused on the slice of work they agreed to focus on in that sprint.

It helps the team with transparency about progress on the work they committed to finish and to raise any issues early before they become blockers.

Let’s have a look at each of the four agile ceremonies in Scrum:

1. Stand up (or daily Scrum)

Goal of the stand up: a brief check-in where the team can raise issues or communicate with the whole team face to face.

Who joins the daily stand up: Developers, Scrum Master, Product Owner

Outcome of daily stand up: the team raises any blockers, but doesn’t have to solve them. Ensure each team member is clear about what they are working on. Each team member should be able to answer these three questions:

• What did I complete yesterday?
• What will I work on today?
• Am I blocked by anything?

When to hold a stand up: daily

Tip: stand ups can be done by business teams and don’t always have to be face-to-face. Here’s a photo of Australian bank ANZ’s executive stand up in action:

And another pic from InsideIT’s stand up:

2. Sprint Planning

Goal of sprint planning: sprint planning helps the team prepare for what work is coming up next. The team discusses each item of work which has been prioritised by the Product Owner.

Who does sprint planning: Developers, Product Owner, Scrum Master

Outcome of sprint planning: that everyone knows what the sprint goal is and how they are going to achieve it. Make sure everyone understands what’s the overall vision or objective of the work.

The team will be comfortable with what work is available to be picked up in the next sprint. The team will discuss any impediments or opportunities and how they can optimise the way the work will be completed.

The team will also estimate the work and draw a line when it is estimated that the effort to complete the work exceeds the team’s capacity or historical velocity.

When to hold sprint planning: at the end of a sprint or very beginning of a new sprint.

Bonus: sometimes in sprint planning you will find things you won’t do, and that’s valuable too.

3. Sprint review

Goal of the sprint review: showcase the work completed and receive feedback from the Product Owner and relevant stakeholders.

Who joins the sprint review: Executive Sponsors, Developers, Scrum Master, Product Owner

Outcome of the sprint review: each team member feels empowered by showcasing their work to the team. The team can celebrate their achievements. Executive team can ask questions. Product owner can provide feedback and check the work is of high quality and satisfies the user story. Works best with drinks and cake.

When to hold a sprint review: at the end of each sprint.

4. Retrospective

Goal of the retrospective: honest discussion about what worked well and didn’t work well. Encourage self-improvement and transparency.

Who joins the retrospective: Developers, Scrum Master, Product Owner

Outcome of a retrospective: receive feedback from the team and seek to improve in the following sprint. The beauty of agile and Scrum is the fast feedback loop.

If something isn’t working well, it only hurts the team for a maximum of 2 weeks. It can then be addressed at the retrospective and action can be taken to address the issue before it gets out of hand.

The outcome should be a commitment from the team to focus on addressing areas that need improvement or continuing behaviours that benefit team health and/or velocity.

When to hold a retrospective: at the beginning of a new sprint, reflecting on a sprint that has just ended.

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The common theme across these Scrum ceremonies is that they encourage team collaboration, transparency and communication.

In my experience, this is what truly makes agile a better way of working.

It’s not the story points or even the way the backlog is prioritised that makes a difference. The true game-changer of agile is that it helps teams with open and honest communication.

These agile/Scrum ceremonies won’t always work the same for every team.

However, they are a great way to facilitate conversation and encourage continuous improvement.