March 28, 2023

What does agile delivery look like, when it’s at its best?

After recently being put on the spot and asked by our group CEO, “What does success look like for delivery at Reason?” my instinctive answer was “No surprises.”

After recently being put on the spot and asked by our group CEO “What does success look like for delivery at Reason?” my instinctive answer was “No surprises.”

On reflection this felt a little weak, so I asked our Reason delivery team to interrogate this and collectively come up with a deeper answer.

The consistent application of our proven, highly adaptive playbook is the secret sauce. It’s what gives us the confidence to state that when we’re working at our best:

  • Delivery @ Reason is focussed on optimising time to market. We do this by using data to reduce waste, increase predictability & transparency, whilst reducing risk.
  • We're do’ers who teach and teachers who do - combining certifications & real-world experience to increase awareness and education for clients and colleagues alike.
  • Our empirical approach ensures we solve the right problems and demonstrate success through measurable outcomes.

We can break this down further with a value focus:

We provide customer (our clients customers) value by:

  • ensuring they are at the centre of everything we do
  • using analytics data to gain insights into customer behaviour
  • building deep empathy for their needs
  • creating measurable outcomes that generate insights to inform what to do next
  • regular, iterative releases of excellent digital solutions
  • ensuring a stable product by means of the latest engineering and devOps practices

We provide client value through:

  • predictable delivery (using probabilistic forecasting data)
  • rapid return on investment by using agile practices and early delivery
  • full transparency on costs and progress
  • providing expert coaching and guidance across product management, project management and business agility
  • being an engaged an open minded partner
  • gaining key domain knowledge to support and shape outcomes

We provide value to our colleagues by:

  • providing industry recognised certified kanban training
  • ensuring accountability re: maintaining high standards of our delivery process
  • a relentless focus on learning and applying continuous improvement
  • being key collaborators throughout the product lifecycle
  • providing direction on what we go after and why
  • giving them agency in team ways of working within the framework

We provide value to Reason by:

  • encouraging lean processes and governance
  • giving full transparency of all active projects
  • capturing data to enable more accurate forecasting and estimation
  • reducing project risk

The vehicle that enables and drives this - our Reason Agile Lean Framework (R.A.L.F.).

RALF

When you work with us, you’ll discover that a dedicated agile delivery lead is assigned, based on your specific requirements. As we have skilled practitioners across product management, agile coaching and project governance, we’re able to build and maintain traction and ensure collaboration at every step of the way.

So, after all that I guess my original answer wasn’t too far off the mark. Because we have a data led approach and constant focus on transparency, when it comes to delivery at Reason, we make sure there are ‘no surprises’!

Agile Delivery Lead