You may be focused on your Agile processes, tools and techniques. But, all this may not be delivering the right value to the customer. At the end of the day, it’s the customer who has to be benefit from the deliveries made through iterations and Release delivery.
If we re-look at the traditional Iron triangle, the project focuses on the 3 key areas i.e., Schedule, cost and time. However, the moment we talk of Agile, we take it a step further. i.e., the focus is on Value (features), quality and the iron triangle. i.e., to say that the iron triangle itself is considered as one of the points in a triangle. The remaining 2 angles are quality and value. Once this fundamental difference is understood, the priorities are also fixed accordingly.
So, when it comes to focus on the values, we talk of the features. And prioritizing the features is of utmost importance. To ensure that the features or functionalities are focused towards the customer, we use a concept of MMF i.e, (Minimum Marketable Features).
MMF is the smallest set of functionalities that provides maximum value to the project and to the customer. This is based on the Pareto’s principle that 80% of benefits comes from 20% of requirements.
So, by focusing on the MMF, maximum value can be delivered in the project at an early phase or initial releases. This helps set off the pressure and also provide more flexibility to the team as the project moves on and the customer gains more confidence about the value that it receives in the project. This has been key to all leading companies across the globe.
To ensure that you get maximum benefit from MMF, the following steps would help:
1) Determine MMF – Ensure that you as a program manager work closely with the product manager to help iddentify the MMF. which would be the most important and high priority features that the customer is expecting.
2) Introduce Slack and manage the change – Ensure that when you plan for the release, include the MMF an the Nice to have features below. This would help to manage the change later, when the customer comes up with new features or functionalities that could not be thought of earlier.
3) Increase MMF – Once the new changes or feature sets are identified, include the new feature at the right priority and remove the slack in terms of the Nice to have features. So, the release inclues the new features as part of the MMF, i.e., the new set of high priority features. As you see in the below illustration, the Release scope now includes MMF with the new feature and excludes the Nice to have Feature 7. Its quite possible that the new feature effort may be equivalent to two nice to have features. In this cae, Feature 6 and Feature 7 both. So, the Release would end up having only the minimum marketable features (MMF).
To ensure that this works efficiently, the features, epics and stories need to be groomed periodically. There needs to be active feedback sessions with the customer between Sprints. The Sprint backlog needs to be re-looked at in every sprint, while the feature sets should be re-prioritized during every release.