Experience Report: Extremely Short Iterations as a Catalyst for Effective Prioritization of Work

In this client organization, agile methods were not producing expected improvements, primarily because the stakeholders could not agree on priorities of the work the team was doing. This team decided to use extremely short iterations to expose the problems caused by a lack of prioritization. In this experience report, the author, who was a coach engaged by the organization, explores this experience. The author will present this extended case study in detail including organizational characteristics and history, the early stages of agile adoption by the team, the crisis, the experiment with two-day long iterations, the detailed stakeholder analysis, the importance of financial modelling in clarifying the crisis, and the resolution that emerged from the crisis and the financial modelling.