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Agile empowers businesses to rapidly identify and respond to new ideas. Living through a pandemic has proved these innovation techniques to be more important than ever. Learn how you can support this vital process.

How You Can Empower Innovation by Becoming an Advocate for Your Agile Development Team

Living through a pandemic has shown us that businesses need to be flexible and resilient to thrive in this new era of business. In a time when so much is uncertain, businesses must be willing and able to constantly adapt to changing circumstances.

Agile provides an execution framework for accomplishing exactly that. By taking people out of their functional silos and placing them in customer-focused multidisciplinary teams, the agile approach allows businesses to rapidly identify and respond to new ideas.

Even those outside of the agile development team have an important role to play in supporting agile at their organization. We will examine how leadership can act as advocates to the agile development team, and therefore empower growth and innovation.

To start, let's review the difference between agile and traditional (waterfall) methodologies for project management.

Waterfall works well for linear projects where the team knows exactly what they need to do to get the job done. The traditional command and control, sequential “do this then that” approach.

On the other hand, agile works well for dynamic projects focused on new ideas and innovation, where multidisciplinary teams uncover unknowns and need to learn and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances to create the best possible outcome.

 It is the practice that enables organizations to act on their new ideas.
- Tim Brown, IDEO CEO

What Makes Agile Adoption So Challenging?

Moving from a more traditional waterfall, command and control approach, to agile isn’t an easy task. The most common reason why agile adoption fails is because company leadership is not fully bought into the process.

Successful agile software development requires an openness to address unknowns via an interactive process of 

 Leadership must understand the importance of innovation as it pertains to company growth, and learn to overcome their fear of change so the business can progress and evolve.

If the organization does not support the team in experimentation, the team will not be empowered to practice true agile.

Empowering Growth and Innovation Through Agile Development

For agile to be truly successful, it is essential that business leaders become agile advocates. This means they are not only bought into the idea that agile will provide better outcomes, but they actively support their team to by paving the way for them to succeed.

Here are ways that business leaders can support their agile development team, and therefore empower growth and innovation.

Recognizing problems help us improve and grow. The best agile teams take failures and turn them into learning experiences and successes.

While “fail fast” is a philosophy commonly associated with agile, what agile really allows teams to do is “learn fast.”

 Without making missteps, the team will not have the opportunity to learn where they can improve.

This can be scary for leaders that are not used to an agile environment. However, when agile teams are able to overcome small failures, they learn how to prevent larger ones in the long run.

Trust the Team to Make Their Own Decisions

Agile teams need the ability to work quickly and address unknowns when they arise. Long bureaucratic approval processes can become significant roadblocks in allowing teams to access the tools that they need to innovate.

In order for teams to capture opportunities, they need to be able to act autonomously.

 This requires full trust from the organization that teams are experts in their own domain. With this trust, teams will be empowered to optimize processes as well as ask for, modify, and use the tools they need to create the best possible work.

Understand the Difference Between Capacity and Throughput

Focusing on throughput means that the emphasis is put on how much a team is producing, and not how much each individual member is working.

By not forcing each team member to constantly perform at their maximum capacity, they have more time available to support each other and solve problems when they arise.

Efficiency is often lost when trying to do too much.

 The most important thing should always be the outcomes the team is delivering as a whole.

Commit to Stability to Achieve Innovation

In order for the team to focus on impact and delivery, the organization should prevent them from experiencing instability or shock. 

Distractions are a threat to the productiveness of the team and can prompt counterproductive coping behaviors and poor decisions.

The organization as a whole needs to be educated on agile so that they also understand when their own actions can be detrimental to company innovation.

Successful agile development is contingent on 

 from all levels of an organization. When an agile team is empowered to explore unknowns, the product becomes more innovative and 

better serves the user and the organization as a whole.

If you want to learn more, here are some helpful resources:

Leading agile transformation: The new capabilities leaders need to build 21st-century organizations

New Requirements For Agile Leadership: How To Lead Differently For Agile Success

To Build an Agile Team, Commit to Organizational Stability

We have some exciting news: Foxbox Digital has a new website. But most importantly, we’ve upgraded our service offerings to better communicate how we help clients in 2021 and beyond. Read on to learn more.

Introducing the New Foxbox Digital — It’s All About Impact

When visiting family during the holidays, you know how you get the question: “So, what do you do for a living?” It’s like clockwork, the same question every year.

But I don’t blame families for asking that question since, for startup founders or anyone building a business, that answer can drastically change every year. And with the 2020 we all just had, it’s a valid question.

So, to get to our news: Foxbox Digital has a new website. But most importantly, we’re upgrading and communicating how we’re helping our clients in 2021 and beyond.

And now it’s time for us to answer the question my family asks me every year:

What Does Foxbox Actually Do for a Living?

We're no longer just a React Native/Engineering shop.

When we started in 2018, our value proposition was simple: We are 

 who can do it for less. And at that time, that was exactly what we did. If you needed React Native programmers, you called Foxbox.

As we grew, we started to acquire more clients up the value chain, including clients who had bigger problems than needing a few engineers to build something. Through this evolution, our team and the diversity of our skillsets evolved as well. Also, it changed how we work and the value proposition for our clients. 

We are now aligned on the impact we make on the client, not just the software built.

We hired more engineers that aren’t React Native experts, and we hired Solution Architects with experience in a wide variety of technologies. Lastly, we hired Senior Product Managers that had experience navigating the complexities of the enterprise and mid-market companies, as well as experience with different types of technologies.

We are integral partners on digital transformation initiatives.

While trying not to fall into the buzzword trap like many others, we are part of our clients' digital transformation efforts. This recent 

 was exactly that: Digital Transformation. And we were an integral part of that initiative.

Our team has really stepped up to be critical members of companies accelerating their Digital efforts. We’ve had the wonderful opportunity to work on initiatives that drive real change within organizations. We are proud of that.

We’ve Expanded and Clearly Defined Our Service Areas

After a LOT of internal debate, here is how we are breaking up our core services. We believe these skillsets represents who we are and give us the best chance to help our clients succeed.

Our three core service areas (simplified) are:

 Product Design and Engineering across Mobile, Web, and eCommerce with React Native, Elixir, and more.

 Product Strategy and Technical Advisory.

 Cloud Computing, Infrastructure, Data, and AI.

In addition to product & engineering, we’ve always done strategy & advisory work too, but we never really called it out on any of our marketing materials or sales decks. It’s just something we did naturally.

Also, we are placing more skillset emphasis on cloud computing. At one point, I thought cloud was simply another buzzword. I was wrong. It’s becoming the core foundation of growing companies and legacy incumbents.

Utilizing cloud infrastructures along with native data and analytics tools makes sense for many companies. It’s all about impact, and investing in the cloud is the best way toward building long-term impact.

Our last redesign was actually 18 months ago. This honestly feels like it happened many years ago. When I looked up our last post, I couldn’t believe it was published in June 2019.

Coming up with a message at the top was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. I wanted it to be bold and differentiated. We went through several variations, and in the end, we thought 

 best represents who we are and how we can help our clients.

And to be honest with you, it’s the truth. We know how to get it done at critical times on complex projects. There is no one better than us at it.

More focus on client case studies and testimonials. 

Great things happen when you acquire more clients and do more projects: You have more ways of showing your work :)

We picked the select projects we thought created the biggest impact in 2020, and we showcased them.

We moved our core beliefs to the front page. 

It’s who we are, and we thought it was important for that to be on the front page.

As always, thank you for reading. I genuinely appreciate it. 2020 was one of the craziest years by far, and here is to hoping that 2021 is one of the best years for all of us!

With the need and adoption of cloud solutions continuing to increase, we created a helpful guide for businesses to help them understand the questions they will need to answer to find the right cloud solution.

4 Critical Questions Every Business Needs to Answer Before Moving to the Cloud

Over the last two decades, cloud solutions have become an integral part of modern IT strategy — and for good reason. The cloud offers businesses greater flexibility, scalability, and efficiency compared to hosting on a local server.

The Covid-19 pandemic has only increased the need and adoption of cloud solutions. Between school closures, social distancing, and work-from-home, data center are experiencing massive surges in the usage of compute resources. Shifting societal norms have resulted in greater dependence on technology that makes data accessible from any location.

With 94% of enterprises already using a cloud service, companies that are not embracing the cloud are sure to be left behind in 2021. Not only are customers demanding it, employees need it to effectively work remote.

When selecting and implementing cloud solutions, there are many different options available depending on an organization's unique needs.

: computing infrastructure is located on the premises of a third-party provider that offers a cloud service to a variety of users. Public clouds can be free services, or require that customers purchase a certain amount of usage (CPU cycles, storage, or bandwidth).

: a cloud computing model whose resources are provisioned over a dedicated, private infrastructure that is solely used by one organization.

: a combination of private and public cloud to meet an organization's needs. For example, public cloud can be used to interact with customers, while sensitive data is secured on a private cloud.

: a form of cloud computing that hosts its resources over the Internet. Examples of IaaS companies include Amazon, Rackspace, Flexiscale.

: a service that provides a platform for consumers to develop, run, and manage applications in the cloud without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure needed.

: a software distribution model in which a third-party provider hosts applications and makes them available to customers over the Internet.

 a custom built software designed to meet the unique needs of an organization delivered over the Internet in a subscription-based model.

Selecting the right solution for your business

 based on your needs and budget can be a difficult task. To help organizations select the right solution, we have compiled 4 questions to help you calibrate your mindset in order to determine which solution is right for you.

1. What are my business goals for the cloud?

It is important to first understand how the right cloud solution will align with your business needs. For example, some organizations may be looking for a solution that will be revenue generating. Others might be looking to support their business from an operations perspective. Some businesses will want a solution that will help them to scale and grow, while some are more focused on cutting costs. With different goals in mind, each business would require a different solution to meet their needs.

2. How can my current network and infrastructure support cloud offerings?

While moving to the cloud might mean a smaller IT footprint in-house, it would likely demand additional network capacity. Understanding the current state of your network and infrastructure will allow you to set a baseline for what you may need to support cloud adoption.

3. What is the structure of your technical team?

What is the size of your technical team? Who is maintaining your technical resources? Is your team internal or external? These are all important questions to think about when selecting a cloud solution. Depending on the expertise you have in-house, you may require additional resources to manage your solution.

4. What problems can the cloud solve for your users?

This is the most important question of all. At Foxbox, we are always focused on first identifying your users and how we can meet their needs through cloud solutions.

Where do you users access the application? Is it in your office? Is it at home? Are they online or offline? Do they like the application? Would they prefer to use a public platform/known technology? These are some of the questions we may ask to dig deeper into how we can craft a solution that would be most beneficial to your users.

Taking a user-centric approach is what we at Foxbox Digital do best. If you would like to learn more about our 

. We would love to help you find the right solution to meet the needs of your users.

Striking the right balance between Agile methodologies and Human-Centered Design (HCD) principles can be a challenge for product development teams. We examine how to relieve healthy tension between the two strategies to find the right customer-market fit.

How to Build Better Digital Products By Embracing Human-Centered Design (HCD) + Agile

Striking the right balance between Agile methodologies and Human-Centered Design (HCD) principles paves the way for product development teams to find the right customer-market fit. At the risk of oversimplifying, HCD provides a framework for "thinking" about product development, while Agile provides the framework for "doing". Calibrating the “thinking” vs “doing” is critical to developing great digital products.

When combining these strategies, it is important to note that some of their basic tenets are at odds with one another. Agile methods focus on eliminating inefficiencies found in the Waterfall model of project management (“doing”). They encourage design and development to happen concurrently to foster increased collaboration and teamwork. On the other hand, HCD principles highlight the importance of user research to discover and solve real user-facing problems (“thinking”). They suggest a discovery phase at the beginning of the project with limited or no developer involvement.

To better understand each method and how to resolve this tension tension between them, let's review the basic tenets of each strategy.

The Manifesto for Agile Software Development

Agile methodologies are best explained by the Agile Manifesto, which was penned by a group of seventeen leaders from the software community while on a ski trip in Utah in early 2001.

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
4. Responding to change over following a plan

Although the technology landscape has changed significantly since the Agile Manifesto was written, Agile Coaches, enthusiasts and avid practitioners agree that these principles are still key to guiding successful Agile development. While different frameworks may interpret them differently, they remain a core component of both conversation and study around this strategy.

The Top 4 Principles of Human-Centered Design

One of the top scholars of HCD is Don Norman, an accomplished researcher and professor who serves as the director of The Design Lab at University of California, San Diego. He is best known for his books on design, especially 

Much of Norman's work involves his advocacy of HCD. His talk 

 is considered by many to cover the fundamental teachings of the theory.

1. Focus upon the people
2. Find the right problem
3. Think of everything as a system
4. Always validate your design decisions

In his talk, Norman identifies two types of problems — fundamental problems and symptoms of the problem. He argues that it’s essential to solve a fundamental problem first because by doing that you’ll solve a root cause of other problems. He contends that no matter how much time it takes, development cannot begin until the right problem to solve has been identified. Failure to do this could lead to an ineffective product that does not meet the needs of users.

Bridging the Gap Between Conflicting Strategies

In essence, both strategies are trying to achieve the same goals of fostering collaboration, solving real problems, and keeping customer satisfaction at the forefront. The main difference between HCD and Agile is how various staff roles are applied to a project and at what stages they are involved.

To remedy this healthy tension between the strategies, we assert the following practices that allow HCD and Agile to work together effectively.

Although developers may not participate in user research, they can still be part of the design process early on. Design sessions would ideally include developers, the people who will use the services, and designers who are experts at engaging users and interpreting qualitative feedback.

As the software is developed, designers would review changes regularly and the whole team would participate in validating the service with real users. This fosters greater collaboration and communication, as well as ensures that proper user research is performed throughout the project timeline to ensure that the right problems are being focused on by the team.

Some challenges, such as making a high-demand software component perform faster, require little user research, yet can deliver high impact results. While user research is certainly important, it should not be trusted over performance metrics. When a team can get something testable in front of real users, they will be able to make more informed decisions about their product roadmap.

Reserve very in-depth user research for user-facing functionality that is new or different. The more innovative your project, the more it justifies the amount of time spent on research.

Add More Customer Facing People to Your Team

In commercial technology industry, there is often a tendency to have too high a ratio of engineers compared to other roles on the team. This is often due to a focus on rapid development rather than customer-centricity.

When in doubt, always refer to the people in your organization who interface with the people that experience the problems that the team is trying to solve. A balanced team should involve the same number of user-facing people as software engineers. This includes product managers and user experience experts. In some cases, members from other teams such as sales, customer experience, and support should also be referred to in order to better understand the voice of the customer.

Measure Productivity by Value, Not Volume

More lines of code do not directly translate into a product that better meets user needs and business goals. In Agile, many teams try to measure their velocity to understand their progress. However, this practice can fall short as it is only important to a specific team in the context of its own achievements.

The only measure of productivity that matters is user satisfaction. Craft KPIs related to your users experience and the value it provides.

Above All, Act in the Best Interest of the User

In conclusion, Agile and HCD are best combined when they are utilized with the common goal of creating happy customers. This will calibrate the "thinking" and the "doing" in the best interest of the user.

 and development processes will become more effective and more resilient. Resilience enables teams to focus exclusively on generating user value, rather than getting locked into a specific plan that does not result in meeting user needs.

By following the suggestions above and keeping users first, product development teams can work together to resolve the healthy tension between Agile and HCD in order to generate the most value for their users.

We’ve seen too many leaders waste their precious time talking about what they want to know, without having what they what they actually need to know right at their fingertips. That's why we have crafted a reporting structure that provides leadership with what they need to focus on to make the right decisions.

How We Handle Executive Reporting Via Dashboards

If you were to ask members of your leadership team what their most important goal is, how many would say improving the strategy of the business? Probably quite a few. But for far too many organizations, leadership is more caught up in day-to-day operations than they are in high-level strategy concerns.

For example, leadership at a fast-growing company might be spending a lot of time asking for status reports, but neglecting to have conversations around how to leverage a team's achievements to provide the greatest impact.

We’ve seen too many leaders waste their precious time talking about what they want to know, without having what they what they actually 

 to know right at their fingertips. That's why we have crafted a reporting structure that provides leadership with what they need to focus on to make the right decisions.

At Foxbox Digital, we like to keep all stakeholder and executive visibility into development and billing with a high-level summary. Without being bogged down by day-to-day details, we send this executive dashboard every month.

The dashboard is meant to track all cross-functional work and keep strategy at the center. It shares important contributions from all team members involved. Each section is broken down to provide a way of tracking and understanding progress toward high-level goals.

Facilitating better planning and decision making

For many of our clients, multiple stakeholders and decision-makers both within and outside of an organization need to be kept up to date regarding projects and deliverables. The executive dashboard is intended to keep all parties involved on the same page and ensure they are receiving highly accurate and consistent information.

Beyond having a single source of truth to share with colleagues, executive dashboards are often used for budgetary planning purposes. We provide an infographic showing the breakdown of hours attributed to each team member, and what particular piece of the project each member is working on. This allows our clients to understand what areas require the most work and how to accurately plan for the future.

In addition, we make sure to call out changing team members and other important changes to resources. This is important because it allows our client be aware of changing needs like equipment and access that will have a large impact on the team.

When not enough data becomes too much data

Our goal is to provide leadership with enough information to make strategic decisions, but not too much information that will overwhelm them. This allows our clients to spend less time sifting through data, and more time on strategic analysis.

We utilize feedback from each of our clients to understand what is most important to them, and make updates to the dashboard accordingly to meet their needs. We start by discussing business objectives and the key questions that need to be answered—and then go seek out the right data. Unfortunately, this process at many other agencies is the reverse of what it should be.

If you are looking for a partner that provides transparency and strategic insights, 

 and we can discuss our services and reporting in more detail.

We believe there are four core components to getting a digital solution to market: Agile, DevOps/Continuous Delivery, digital lifecycle, and iteration. I wanted to give you more insight into how we think about these components and what it's like to work with us.

Getting Digital Solutions to Market

Here is how we get digital solutions to market.

If you haven’t figured it out, we’re kind of obsessed with Agile and digital product delivery. We’ve thought about this topic for a long, long time. Agile is the core of everything that we do. We don't just say it, or talk and write about it: We do it. It's integral to everything that we do. Without it, we wouldn't have made it to where we are today.

If you're interested more in how we think about Agile, I would start here with these in-depth articles that will give you some insight into how we think about execution. Get some coffee.

The Definitive Guide to Agile Product Development for the Enterprise: How to Build an Amazing Product in 2020

Agile & Scrum: How to Build Better Products, Faster in 2020

How to Nail Agile Collaboration and Build Better Products

DevOps and Continuous Delivery gets our clients software to market, reliably

 follows Continuous Delivery, which enables us to deliver incremental changes reliably, without breaking what has already been delivered. At a high level, this is what you’re getting when utilizing our defined DevOps and Continuous delivery process.

Modern development processes including trunk-based development to ensure a stable product

Peer code reviews, unit & integration tests, continuous integration, automated testing,  automated deployments

Significant reduction in chances of human error

Validation that we’ve built continues to work as your product evolves

We handle the end to to end of our client's digital lifecycle

We follow strict modern software development processes to ensure we reliably deliver the functionality you want, on time, and on-budget. We’ll lead you through the entire digital lifecycle of your product.

 We’ll help you build the right product before anything is planned or developed. It’s worth noting that some of our clients come to us post-product strategy to focus on execution only, and that’s OK too.

 -- This in-depth phase includes UX Workshops, technical discovery and analysis, prototypes and product roadmaps. Once complete, we’ll build out our sprint plan so you know what is going to be built, when.

 We follow staged releases, and agile methodologies to build the product, right.

easure, learn & iterate while developing, not after

Our core components of getting a solution to market all rely on us measuring, learning and iterating what we're developing. We measure everything from development velocity to product effectiveness. We learn from the users to influence future improvements. Once complete, we update our sprint plan.

It's critical for us that this all happens while we're developing and managing the product development. This constant measurement enables us to stay focused on creating a product that creates an impact.

There is a reason our tagline is Move Purposely. We are disciplined in how we deliver our client's products from start to finish. We do everything with a purpose and are always moving to create a quality product that has lasting impact.

If you want to learn more about how we create software, 

, and we'll walk you through our process in more detail.

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