Agile Way of Delivery

There is a one apple tree in your back yard. Of course, you like apples, so you take care of the tree very diligently throughout the year. You irrigate it regularly; spray insecticides and pesticides to protect it from menacing insects and pests throughout the year.  You also provide fertilizer to the tree. In short you invest your time, money and mental space in the hope of plucking some sweet apples during spring.

Now consider two different scenarios. In the first scenario, you check on your tree every morning.  You   watch the blooming flowers and their getting transformed into tiny green fruits. Slowly these apples get bigger and ripe. You see the value is getting delivered incrementally.

In the second scenario, even the tree is invisible forget about the flowers and the fruits. But you are assured by some divine power that on 3^rd week of spring, the tree will become visible loaded with lots of sweet apples. In anticipation of those sweet apples, you keep on taking care of that invisible tree for the whole year.

I don’t think you will like the idea of the invisible tree. Why? Because, you are not sure that value will be delivered on a particular day, you cannot check whether the tree needs any trimming or some other extra care. You are not getting value incrementally and can’t correct the course.

Aha! I can relate this to the Agile Way of Delivery. In agile way of delivery, you get several chances to correct the course, because you have short feedback loops. Also value gets delivered incrementally which keep on justifying the investment and allows the sponsors to change the investment patterns if required.