New Year. New Website. New Blog.

Happy New Year and welcome to the Enigma Consulting and Solutions blog.

Back in October 2014, my first article was published by the Scrum Alliance on Product Backlog Refinement. It took a while, but 18 months later I had a second article published on a 10-pin bowling retrospective that I created. Over the next few months I had a further six articles published on the behaviours of Scrum Team members, during which time I decided that I should start my own blog.

I began the AgileRobin blog in May 2016 and my first article discussed my initial aspirations, before my Agile mindset kicked in and started to think about what a minimal viable product (MVP) would look like. An extract, from that post is below.

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My initial thought was to create a website that would include a blog. I therefore started to think about what I might need to do in order to create such a website:-

  • purchase a domain
  • identify where to host the website
  • create the website
  • create a homepage with details about the website/me
  • create a page for the blog
  • incorporate my twitter feed
  • create a page for useful links to other blogs/websites
  • add analytics
  • and the list goes on…

Now, not having a technical background, a brief trawl of the internet suggested to me that there are many websites that would help deliver the requirements I had in mind. So it would be possible for me to do it, however, the potential value from a website still seemed to be too far away if I wanted to have some/all of these features. So I looked at the problem from a different point of view.

Thinking back to a previous role, if I was a Product Owner, what was the MVP (minimum viable product)? Did I need an all singing, all dancing website immediately, or could my vision be delivered incrementally? What was the quickest and easiest way to see my vision become reality? What are the things that I could prioritise in order to start getting value earlier? Are there different tools that could be used in order to achieve that value?

This got me thinking about the project management triangle (illustrated below). If I wanted to deliver something sooner rather than later (i.e. fix time) while still ensuring quality, I needed to reduce the scope of what I wanted to achieve.

Project Management Triangle

Returning to my original aim – I wanted to be able to publish a blog. The answer then seemed obvious. Rather than looking to create a website with the online tools available to me, I decided to reduce scope and start with a blog only. This would also allow me to glean feedback and identify if really need to create a website.

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Since that initial blog post my circumstances changed and I am now an independent contractor providing Agile coaching and Scrum Master consultancy services. As such there was a need achieve my initial goal of creating a website.

So here it is, a new year, a new website and a new blog.

 

Posted in: MVP