Sometimes you have to look back to move forward. In the case of Boston-based iZotope, an unwavering commitment to reflecting and revising lies at the heart of the music software company’s ability to harness change to forge a competitive future.
Constantly recalibrating keeps the company agile, Senior Director of Product Management Todd Baker said, a fitting descriptor considering the core tenet’s relevance to the “Manifesto for Agile Software Development” — a pioneering document that has held influence over innumerable individuals, teams and companies over the past two decades.
Count iZotope among the manifesto’s disciples, as the company relies on a variety of feedback mechanisms to catch and enact solutions to whatever’s hindering its development.
“Continuous improvement is a critical aspect of the agile mindset, both for the development teams creating products and features, and for the leadership teams managing them,” Baker said. “Between solicited feedback and regular, action-oriented retrospectives, our processes are constantly adapting with inputs from direct experience.”
Written in 2001 by 17 independent-minded engineers, the four core values and 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto went on to change software development forever. In this ever-evolving field, though, a 21-year-old document may not remain relevant forever.
To learn more about the manifesto’s modern applicability, Built In Boston asked a product professional and a project manager for their thoughts on how agile principles impact their work today and what they need to keep processes fresh and flexible.
How does your team leverage the principles of agile in its methodology?
iZotope actively embraces an agile mindset in how we work by keeping the principles of individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change at the forefront of our operations. We acknowledge that product development is a complex, multidependent process, and we understand that to be successful, we have to be able to adapt to new learnings as we build value for our customers.
As a business, we strive to cultivate both a shared context and a clear, shared purpose. We rely heavily on small cross-functional development teams to balance the engineering, design and business goals as they leverage that context and purpose to drive progress. Our development teams have a relatively high degree of autonomy, collaborate daily, focus on outcomes and continually strive to improve as a team. We find that with this approach, we end up with highly engaged teams that clearly understand how their efforts are creating value and propelling us forward as a company.
Product development is a complex, multidependent process, and we understand that to be successful, we have to be able to adapt.”
How do you ensure agile principles are properly implemented so that they help developers and product managers, rather than hinder them?
By creating a trusting environment rooted in autonomy, mastery and purpose, we ensure that agile principles are implemented in a way that helps developers and product managers. Mechanically, this is done through a combination of Scrum and Kanban frameworks. As leaders, we welcome and encourage feedback from across the company as direction on where we need to improve. That being said, probably the most effective control here is called out in the last principle listed in the agile manifesto: the idea that, regularly, the team reflects on their process and tunes their behavior to become more effective.
How does your team leverage the principles of agile in its methodology?
The Dawn Digital team finds the principles of agile to be highly beneficial for e-commerce applications. One of the biggest strengths of the Agile Methodology is the continuous involvement of stakeholders throughout the development cycle, so risks and feedback can be captured and addressed and the team can deliver the best experience to our customers.
Communication is key for any process to work.”
How do you ensure agile principles are properly implemented so that they help developers and product managers, rather than hinder them?
Communication is key for any process to work. The developers, project managers and product managers communicate and work together so there is an understanding of changes in priorities and requirements in order to deliver the best solution to our customers. We also conduct regular retrospective sessions for team members. This provides an opportunity for them to voice any concerns with our processes or tools, allowing us to always be iterating and improving.
