Agile Processes and Customer Experience

Despite all fashionable favor, agile processes are a disaster in terms of customer outcomes. Imagine that you ordered a fridge but received a dishwasher instead. It is unlikely that you will be happy on this sort of creative agility. Customer process must be as precise and reliable as a Swiss clock.

It is another story that customers always do their best to break this clock's precision in every possible and impossible manner: change their mind ten times a day, disappear at the moment of delivery, break supplied goods and claim a refund etc. And yet, customers highly appreciate flexibility of a company in response to their instant whims.

We must not confuse agility of customers with precision of the company in response to agile client demands. Company can achieve accuracy and flexibility in serving clients only through rigorous process approach with detailed mapping of all possible client scenarios.

Naturally, this detailed work-through may yield dozens and even hundredths of complex client processes and variations. But none of these processes will be agile alone. However, a coordinated ensemble of these processes will ultimately deliver responsiveness, flexibility and precision, which agile clients value so much.