A technically successful project nearly faced failure due to unmet user expectations. Nurses grew impatient, imagining features that hadn’t yet materialized. The focus shifted to managing these rising expectations by clearly outlining deliverables. Mike Cohn reveals four essential expectations leaders should establish in agile projects, emphasizing transparency with tools like red/green light reports. This insightful discussion highlights that aligning expectations is crucial for project success.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Successful Project Nearly Lost To Expectations
Mike Cohn's first Scrum project was technically successful but almost failed due to growing user expectations.
He spent the last three months focused on telling nurses exactly what would and would not be delivered to avoid perceived failure.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Explicitly Define What Will Be Delivered
Meet stakeholders early and state clearly what will and will not be in the delivered system.
Tone down unrealistic expectations to ensure the product is perceived as successful.
insights INSIGHT
Expectations Determine Perceived Success
Managing expectations is crucial when adopting or improving agility.
Poor expectation management can sink an otherwise successful transition or project.
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My first Scrum project was incredibly successful, yet it was almost a failure. All of the technical aspects of the project were going extremely well. We were ahead of schedule, stress and scalability tests showed that we'd exceed uptime and reliability goals. Everyone on the team was having fun and doing their best work. The problem was that user expectations had been growing faster than the functionality being developed. The project was call center software to be used by hundreds of nurses initially, scaling to thousands. Nurses would use the system to triage patients, provide advice, dispatch emergency personnel when needed and so on. In monthly sprint reviews with the nurse users, I was routinely shocked by what they’d come to expect, some of which wasn’t even technically feasible. With about three months left on the year-long project, I realized my focus had to change. From then on, I spent almost all of my time on expectations management. I met with nurses in each of the call centers and described exactly what would and would not be in the delivered system. I toned down their expectations about the system’s impact on world peace, global warming, and personal weight loss. Had I not done this, the product would have been perceived as a failure. Since that project, I have been acutely aware of the importance of expectations management to the overall success of any project. Setting and managing expectations is perhaps even more important when an organization seeks to adopt or improve its agility. With agile improvement efforts, I find it helpful to set and manage expectations about four things:
How quickly teams will improve
How long it will take to gain additional predictability from the team’s new way of working
How there will almost always come a time when turning back looks easier than sticking with it
The level of involvement in the transition that will be necessary from various stakeholders and organization leaders
By properly setting expectations you can avoid the problem of having an otherwise successful transition or project sunk by unrealistic expectations,
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