Nowadays, everyone feels pressure in an organization. Traditionally pressure has been viewed as starting at the top of the org chart and permeating and cascading down in the organization. For this discussion, let’s assume the pressure originates outside an organization as market or customer pressures. Those are often to deliver features and services and to do so faster and more cheaply. Patience is not a key virtue of today’s economy.
In an organization that subscribes to Agile values and processes, the pressure takes the following path:
- The market and customers require services and features faster, cheaper and at higher quality.
- Leadership (management, sales, customer success, marketing, finance, etc.) respond by putting pressure on the Product organization, which is – at the end of the day – represented by Product Managers and Product Owners.
- Product Owners ask for the Agile team(s) to delivery stories and features at high speed, but with good quality.
- The Scrum Master acts as protector of the team and helps negotiate a feasible commitment (related to scope and time).
- The Agile team attempts to deliver against their forecast/commitment.