Businesses are facing fierce competition and have an immediate need to meet time-to-market requirements. The inability to transform the way IT operates leads to lost revenue opportunities. Innovation often takes a backseat in the urge to meet existing market demand, leading to reduced customer satisfaction and market share.
On similar lines, traditional outsourcing models are falling short of matching the pace of modern digital transformation needs. The Agile POD (Product-Oriented Delivery) model is a modern engagement strategy that businesses leverage to accelerate their digital transformation goals and keep pace with the ever-changing market demands.
What is an Agile POD?
As the name suggests, Agile POD is a concept rooted in Agile frameworks & methodologies. An agile POD is a small, self-sustainable & cross-functional group of team members where people with diverse skill sets work collaboratively to deliver defined products iteratively in consecutive sprints in a scrum.
“If a team couldn’t be fed with two pizzas, it was too big,” said Jeff Bezos. He believed in this ‘Two Pizza Team’ Idea because that small teams would typically avoid unnecessary communication gaps & dependencies that would hinder product delivery. Agile POD is also something that adheres to that concept. Agile PODs mainly consist of four to ten members from multiple disciplines & are built to be autonomous & highly adaptable that deliver outcomes efficiently.
Who can be part of Agile POD?
The composition of POD differs based on product requirements. Below are the most common team members of agile POD.
- Product Owner
- Technical Architect
- Scrum Master
- UI/UX Designer
- Developer (Full stack, Data, API)
- DevOps
- Quality Engineer
Agile POD Key Principles
POD teams are built with an emphasis on collaboration, flexibility & efficiency to deliver products or services in an incremental fashion. The teams are co-located, multi-disciplinary, and work closely with the customer/business
Advantages of Agile POD
Improved Speed & Efficiency:
Close to 50% of companies name “team productivity”, one of the most important reasons for adopting Agile. The POD model framework can be considered as a key enabler to make this happen. With each member of the development unit being accountable for their part of the work, the team’s efficiency and the overall quality of the output increase dramatically, bringing forth systematic growth.
Autonomy:
In traditional outsourcing service models, the management defines the project scope, prioritises the tasks, and maintains the overall workflow. Such an approach could cause bottlenecks for innovative startups and smart releases, where creativity is key to success. The POD model team structure allows teams to quit doing mundane tasks under constant management supervision. It brings about collaboration, resulting in better productivity. As the project ownership scope falls into the responsibility of the POD team, clients can rest assured that the end result will be closer to what it’s expected.
Flexibility & Scalability:
The pods are formed by core teams & specialists. This composition offers good flexibility to address multiple development needs. Generally, teams would be in an ideal size with the right competencies. Based on requirements, the team size can be ramped up & down accordingly.
Improved Stakeholder Satisfaction:
Agile Pod’s nature to cope with dynamic business objectives & goals ensure improved stakeholder satisfaction. Based on cost also, agile pods look beneficial as businesses can start small and scale accordingly without compromising on quality & efficiency.
Best Practices for Agile Pods
- Have a clear understanding of the product requirements and then plan in terms of scope, stipulated timelines, deliverables, budget etc. This activity helps big in choosing the suitable PODs for your product goals.
- Instil your product vision with the POD teams. Interact with POD members and educate them about the ‘big-picture’ of the product; this makes them feel more connected to the vision, embrace the purpose & motivates them to contribute more.
- Focus on creating POD with the right proposition – POD leader, Core Team, and Part-time specialists. A relevant skillset proposition is essential to deliver product goals without outside dependencies.
- Define roles & responsibilities clearly for both internal stakeholders & outsourcing teams. This ensures that a proper people system is in place to handle and manage discrepancies in the product roadmap.
- Introducing proper communication & collaboration tools helps POD members to work together efficiently. Leveraging project management tools provides much-needed visibility to the project’s progress.
- Keep a transparent review mechanism that collects helpful feedback & insights from POD members, upon which POD planning & strategies can be improved to meet the product goals better.
Agile PODs at SRM Tech
Our Agile POD teams can be your strong & capable ally as you look forward to significantly advancing your digital product vision. We can manoeuvre your digital product roadmap with our strong expertise, agility & continuous innovation to drive impactful business outcomes.
We have successfully helped the world’s largest car manufacturer’s digital mobility initiatives with our globally distributed Agile POD teams, demonstrating our proficiency as a digital outsourcing partner.
Let’s catch up and discuss how our Agile POD engagement can best serve your digital product visions. Do drop in a comment or get in touch with us!
