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A few months ago I led an Agile kick-off for a project meant to extend a Web portal. During the Values exercise, the team identified that "quality work" was a value. Good, I thought, let's see what they mean by that. As we were discussing the various meanings of "quality" (e.g. defect-free, fit for purpose), I offered this interpretation:
"Quality products delight your customers."
This was where the fun started...
Some folks were puzzled, others wide-eyed. One of the guys was outright rankled: "I don't want to delight! Why not just satisfy?"
"Well," I said, "do satisfied users come back for more business, or do the delighted ones?"
People then argued with the concept of delight. Why bother? Nobody's trying to delight them! "Actually," I said, "all of you know several companies and products that aim to delight you. Can you recall them?"
Soon enough, the team came up with some examples: Google; Firefox; Photoshop (at least in their early days). Slowly, the mood shifted. Within a few minutes, this group of people had found new motivation for their project.
The verb "delight" became somewhat of an anchor for the workshop. Afterwards, two people told me the experience was "delightful".
I found it interesting that although the team chose to go beyond "satisfy", they stopped short of "delight". That might have been too big a step.
The word they settled on was "please". Here's how they put it in a sentence:
"We believe in quality work, therefore we will respond to the business' needs in order to please our end users, perform each task to the best of our abilities, and be proud of our final product."
In my book, such a discussion is one of the highlights of project chartering (which is part of the kick-off). It goes beyond the artifacts of goals, tasks and stories and gets folks to reflect on their work: why they do it and what defines success. It also starts the project on a high note. Try it!
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