Many Agile projects still stick to working towards deadlines instead of iterating and building product increments. When working towards a deadline, building feature after feature per iteration, the benefits that one would normally have with an incremental way of working, such as learning about users, market, technology, and architecture are lost. The risk of waste is taken for granted in that case. Nevertheless the agile manifesto is violated on several points such as simplicity or delivering valuable software to users.

A major challenge faced in product development, especially with newly introduced products, is to validate whether or not the product solves problems and delivers value to it’s target group. It is common practice to develop products based on assumptions without involvement of real users. As a consequence the risks of failure and waste of costs is accepted. Even expensive market analysis cannot eliminate uncertainty about the product’s value to real users. Obtaining valid feedback and learn from a product that doesn’t exist yet can be difficult, which leads to a high degree of uncertainty in terms of features the product should contain. Why would you take that risks while real users are available to support you gathering insights and validate the product? The …

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