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[00:00:09] Sean: Hi everyone. I'm joined by Dan, our senior product manager, and today we're gonna go through how agile sprints can deliver business outcomes. So to start us off, how do agile sprints help teams deliver business value more quickly?
[00:00:25] Dan: Yeah, great question. Thanks for having me today, Sean. So agile sprints deliver value quicker because they essentially focus on completing small tangible pieces of work allowing businesses to deliver something more quickly and efficiently.
[00:00:41] Sean: And so you mentioned about sprints. for the benefit of those watching, could you just briefly describe what a sprint is just for those that may not be aware?
[00:00:49] Dan: Great question. Sprints are essentially a time boxed event where typically from one to four weeks, it's where the work actually happens, the development works. So tasks get taken from a sprint backlog. They can then get worked into a sprint. It typically, like I say, it's one to two weeks and the team just work through the backlog of tasks.
[00:01:08] Sean: Can you explain a little bit more about the impact of shorter development cycles and their impact on project success?
[00:01:15] Dan: Overall, it's a positive impact on project success, absolutely. So shorter cycles mean faster feedback loops, quicker adjustments and more frequent delivery of value to our customers.
[00:01:25] If we look at the Scrum framework, the main pillars of inspection, adaptation and transparency. What you touched on there is inspection. So inspecting what gets done, that inspecting of the feedback loops and then adapting the process and making sure people's opinions are heard. and then adapting where relevant.
[00:01:44] Sean: Yeah, that sounds really interesting because one of the big buzzwords at the moment is AI and how businesses can integrate AI. Do you think having an agile process would help develop those new features doing what impact you think it would have?
[00:01:59] Dan: Absolutely. Shorter cycles essentially just means faster feedback loops. So it allows teams to test quickly, refine what the AI product is and what gets released. And then also we can deliver it and get that real data feedback. So and then we can iterate again.
[00:02:18] what scrum really pushes on is this empiricism, empirical data, which means making decisions backed by data, not just gut feeling. So ultimately the goal is to deliver value, innovative, updates and get that in front of customers quickly.
[00:02:36] Sean: So you mentioned a lot about feedback loops and contributing.
[00:02:39] And You also mentioned about the smaller aspects, keeping things, more manageable. What, but what would you say that the key benefits are of breaking down large projects into smaller sprints?
[00:02:50] So feedback loops, allow teams to continuously, improve essentially by helping them to deliver more relevant value and more frequently. And because another thing with sprints and I obviously we work and we use this methodology and one of the things that can crop up is well, how do you strike a balance between having a sprint that does enough work to move something along and not have it so big that you're ending up missing them all the time?
[00:03:22] Dan: Yeah, great question. There's a balance to strike, but ultimately the sprint must deliver a valuable increment at the end of it. So that's where you sit down and work closely with your internal team. So what can actually be delivered within the time frame on the resources available and also the customer's priority for that sprint.
[00:03:42] So it might be different to what our priority is. So we need to strike a balance and that is done by effective communication.
[00:03:48] Sean: So we've covered quite a lot there already. in terms of the benefits of agile and how it really, that speed can help deliver the outcomes and the, not just the, an outcome of a feature, but ultimately those features can drive revenue for a business.
[00:04:04] So just to finish off here, I'm a business and I'm looking to implement agile project management. What would you say that the first step to that is?
[00:04:14] Dan: I think when you do your own research initially on the benefits of Agile, it might not work for you and your business. Maybe a waterfall, sequential, linear process will work for you more if you need those key sign off periods before moving on to the next step.
[00:04:29] Agile is different in that respect that you can iterate and move quicker through cycles. So I think you need to review the research, review what product or feature you're hoping to release. If it's majorly complex, potentially look towards Agile as a methodology. You can always reach out to us as well.
[00:04:48] We're happy to support and discuss your needs.
[00:04:51] Sean: Thank you very much for joining me today, Dan, and thanks for going through Agile in such detail. And I hope the viewers found that useful. Thank you very much.
[00:04:59] Dan: Thanks for having me, Sean. It's been a pleasure.
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