Deal With The Riskiest Parts First

Agile celebrates small wins, but also requires reducing risks.

We started off the project pretty well. In fact, I’m quite proud that of all the providers our client had worked with prior to us, we’re actually the first that’s gotten to the point of enough usability to be at least partially deployed on their storefront.

We managed to achieve what we have by addressing the riskiest parts early. Imagine having to cross a range of mountains but having the power to arrange them whichever way you want. If you’re smart, you’ll move the tallest one first, just to make sure you can do it. The rest should then be reasonably easier.

Through several discussions with the client, I surmised that the primary roadblock they encountered with a previous developer was a pretty fundamental one — getting all their current data from their Excel sheets into the new system. The provider wanted them to input the data into the program one by one. It was just too much work. What they needed, obviously, was an easy import tool.

So, being in my view the biggest potential reasons for the project to fail, I put both of these at the top of the backlog and went to work on them with the team at the very beginning, clarifying the details I didn’t fully get as we went along. And it worked. It took a couple more sprints than I expected…

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