The Swedish company Netoptions has recently released their latest version of their product BizWizard, tools for digital marketing and communication by e-mail, mobile phone and the Internet. As part of the development and marketing, Apprino and Netoptions organised a user-workshop inspired by Appreciative Inquiry.
At the workshop, new features of the product were demonstrated. The users were then urged to answer the question "What did you like most about these new features?". Next they were encouraged to say if there was anything they liked that they wanted more of, or if there was something missing from the previous version. They were also encouraged to come up with new ideas for coming versions and to prioritise among them.
The workshop was a huge success for both users and developers. In order to more fully understand how such a workshop could be integrated in the system development process, Apprino and Netoptions teamed up again to do an "Agile Retrospective" on the workshop, following the concept introduced by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen. They have combined the ideas behind agile software development with appreciative inquiry to a new way of doing Lessons Learned sessions. We focused especially on what worked well during planning and conducting the workshop, what could be improved next time, completely new ideas and who made special effort and deserved to be acknowledge for that.
The developers were really happy about the user-workshop, because they seldom talk to to customers directly. They could now see their reactions and hear about their thoughts immediately. It made them proud to hear the users comments on what they likes, and filled them with energy much needed to finish the last details before the release. They also liked the "Agile Retrospective" workshop, since it was rather short (less than 2 hours) but still generated lots of valuable information, why they are considering using it again.
Interested in learning more about Agile Retrospectives? Check out this brief and witty text, look at the informative and funny video or buy the book.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
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