Effective Agile Customer Engagement in a Large-scale Organization

Mohor Banerjee Kathleen Rilliet Program Manager, Business Operations Solution Program Manager

VTG Operations and Trials VTG Systems Program Management Cisco Systems, Inc. Cisco Systems, Inc.

Abstract

A key principle of the Agile manifesto is continuous and effective customer engagement at all stages of the product development lifecycle. In large organizations, such engagement must occur at many levels.

In this presentation, we discuss the challenges facing effective customer engagement in Agile projects for large-scale organizations and propose a streamlined process that addresses these issues. Our observations are specifically based on the Agile product development methodology as practiced by Cisco’s Voice Technology Group. We also propose a simple but innovative way of measuring the ROI for customer engagement in Agile projects.

Our target audience includes Product Owners who are primarily responsible for Customer Engagement

in Agile scrum teams, but also Portfolio Managers and others involved in converting Strategy and

Roadmaps into Action [at whatever level is desired]. The target audience also includes Agile Customers

i.e. representatives of companies who may be engaged for providing feedback to Agile projects at other

large-scale organizations.

Background of Authors

Mohor Banerjee has over 5 years of product development experience at Cisco Systems, USA and

Siemens AG, Germany. For the last one year, she has been part of the Operations team at Voice

Technology Group, Cisco, where she helps develop and enhance Cisco-specific Agile content and

methodologies. Mohor is a Certified Scrum Master of the Scrum Alliance.

Kathleen Rilliet has more than 20 years of experience in project, program and portfolio management in

new product development. She has worked both as a consultant/trainer and a practitioner. During this

time she has had the opportunity to work at and with companies large and small and at various degrees

of maturity. While at a medical device company in Siemens Medical Group, she lead the development,

documentation and implementation of a new, consolidated Product Lifecycle Process. At Cisco Systems,

where she has been for nearly 4 years, she is involved in the Transition of VTG to Agile Philosophy and

methodology – end to end. She is a Certified Scrum Master.