In the book ‘Black Swan’ Nassim Taleb introduces the concept of epistemic arrogance: where what a person thinks they know exceeds what they actually know.
On Agile projects, epistemic arrogance is evident when there’s a mis-match between what we think the customer needs and what the customer actually needs – something David Hussman refers to as ‘Product Arrogance’.
Although one of the key goals of Agile is to deliver value to customers early, it’s not uncommon for ‘agile’ labeled projects to end up delivering the wrong thing on time and within budget. From a Lean perspective, anything that does not deliver value to the customer is waste; and according to Taiichi Ohno, father of the Toyota Production System, “waste is a crime” – as well as bad for business!
In this video, Product Anthropologist David Hussman shares some valuable tips, including:
– How to confirm you’re developing the right thing
– An alternative approach for communicating progress and ROI to senior stakeholders
– How to slice whole project deliverables for maximum business value
Have a watch, and share your thoughts.
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