If Agility is the ability to respond to changes in a meaningful way, a huge part of that consists of the time it takes until this response is in the hands of the customer so that a feedback loop can form.
If that's true, what's the value of Discovery Epics or Stories, Spikes, Dual Track whatever...
... except for satisfying an ancient claim, often perceived as a rule, about 2-week timeboxes, that in the real world rarely create valuable feedback-loops but small Milestones, used to assess a deviation from the yearly plan - sometimes called roadmap - of scope and budget twice a month?
Get something small, yet potentially valuable, in the hands of a customer or user as quickly as you're a able to do sustainably. Find out whether it suits their needs, improve or try something else.
@bbak The fastest version of “something small” is to me a prototype. Even a paper one! I LOVE inviting users to a #designsprint. Within a design sprint you can validate several ideas and iterate with just a few days.
@RosannaSibora This paper-thing has no value for the users. A small group that's hardly representative for the real needs of users is given something to play with, instead of the real thing, a proxy. Then the proxy is thrown away, which is waste. Then a handover from those good at building proxies to those good at building the real thing happens.
Gained knowledge and hence risk reduction is uncertain, if not questionable. But a lot of time and capacity is used.
I'd argue that this proxy represents a mental model of the potential solution. It's a tool for thinking, aligning and learning fast as a team. In my book, this is not waste. Also, I'm not sure I agree with your assumption that some of those who built the proxy needs to be different from those building the real thing.
When you construct any physical thing, it's very helpful to first create a design on paper IMO.
(Agree that 2 week milestones is an agile anti-pattern tho.)
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