Category: Teams

When I arrived at a startup software division, the story-writing process was virtually stalled. A young woman with a strong personality and backed by the authority of her executive father was vying for control with the more experienced Pharmacy Technician that was charged with supplying User Stories to the development team. The female tech, acting in the Product Owner role, liked the younger woman and even considered herself the junior’s mentor, but the tug-of-war against the stronger personality impeded progress.

As someone with significant project scar tissue, I was inserted as Sr. Business Analyst and was able to help them break the logjam. To the younger woman, I became the keeper of the product backlog and her story reviewer. She could submit detailed written stories of interest that I could include in the product backlog. To the more experienced tech, I became a sounding board for her more verbal approach to story writing. She wanted a partner to bounce ideas off of and someone to validate her own thinking before submitting a story in writing.

What made me effective in a situation where two others were stalled? I respected and agreed with both of them and refused to lock horns with either party. Instead, I offered gentle suggestions here and there, allowing each of them to write stories from their own perspective. I have learned that it is much easier to say ‘yes’ to feature requests than argue about them up front. Customers have limited budgets and limited time. In the end, it is these larger constraints that determine which features get included in a product. The most valuable features tend to bubble up in the list of priorities and get worked on. The least valuable often sink down and fade into oblivion. After all, a product backlog does not have to be empty when the project is done.

One day I was reviewing a list screen in the development den and hit a brick wall. The application queue page had been developed by the senior architect of the team, a bearded philosopher type who had deeply absorbed the agile mantra to ‘maximize the amount of work not done.’ For this fellow, the answer was automatically ‘no’ until you made your case. I’m sure you’ve met one or two of these in your travels.

The screen in question was a list of transactions and they had some common attributes. That is, multiple lines could have the same description or the same type. Anxious to make what I thought was an easy improvement, I suggested that we add a ‘Row’ or ‘Item’ number column – something that the user could click on to open that row. The architect insisted that any other column could be used for that. A new column was not needed. The identifier column was indeed added to the list, but not that day. That day I left the room with hurt feelings and an important lesson in hand.

I failed to make the case for the new column. The change seemed logical to me (and, in fact, was) but I approached the feature based on my own desire and experience rather than bringing the team a value-based User Story that carried the weight of a real stakeholder. It is a lesson I would repeat until I fully embraced the principle that development team members are not application stakeholders. Only the voice of a real customer carries authority in a feature User Story.