Customer-driven Agile Software Development

Or how I turned around the entire software development process in an organisation from ‘agile’ to agile. In a way that we could better serve our customers.

Pretty early in the creation of my current team, it was obvious we have a group of people with a pretty wide selection of skillsets that could all contribute to a variety of projects on our roadmap. It was very hard to get external and internal stakeholders to agree on urgency vs. priority and timelines. Then there was the additional complexity of external deadlines and revenue. If a customer is paying, or even has paid, for something to be developed and there is a timeline, does this mean it automatically takes priority over other things that SHOULD be taking precedent? Furthermore, is the decision with the technical team, or with someone else?