The last years, as a part of a fast changing working and development environment I learned something quite fundamental: “Waterfall” (for Physical Product Development) does not really work anymore. When you have a very long term project, it is most likely that the initial product goal will be obsolete when you try to roll out the product.
The question is: “Can it be replaced by agile frameworks?”. After having worked in more and more projects which used “some agile methods and tools” I wanted to know what it is really all about. So I started a professional online training, which gave interesting insights into SCRUM and perfectly prepared me for the certification @ SCRUM.org.
Now it is quite clear to me how to use this new knowledge for further development projects. Of course you cannot roll out a physical product increment at the end of every sprint. This thought comes from Software Development which can be changed more frequently. But what you can do is to produce a physical prototype within every sprint, to have users and stakeholders really test it and let them give feedback. This feedback can be taken into account to go through a new development round for a better and more refined prototype. This is very much linked to the Design Thinking methods that I also use constantly within my development work.
A few weeks later I managed to “add” the Product Owner. This is definitely more “my thing”. I am a product person. I love to bring ideas to life. I enjoy the development process with all its ups and downs and challenges.
