Even the most experienced agile team can struggle to deliver an agile project with a client who is unfamiliar with the process. Unless your client is also experienced in agile, there is a high likelihood of confusion and misunderstanding.

We believe in agile, and we get buy-in from clients. But we've learned the hard way that buy-in rarely comes with true understanding. 'Sure, we're happy to attend scrums' quickly becomes 'Wait, you mean every day?'

That doesn't mean we should abandon the principles. It just means we have to be more considerate in our approach. The burden of understanding sits with us. If the client doesn't understand part of the process, it's our responsibility to ensure that 1) we're filling in the gaps where necessary, and 2) we're educating them on how they can fill them.

Our clients come from a wide range of industries and backgrounds, with varying levels of comfort and experience with agile (but it's commonly zero for both). The only way to consistently deliver is to continually adapt to each client's strengths and weaknesses. This can mean anything from excusing them from the daily scrum, in favour of weekly or daily reports, or stepping in as a proxy product owner.

The first part of this talk aims to explain the complexity of the dynamics in a vendor-client agile project, and why it's not OK to draw lines according to methodolgies and leave it at that. In other words, why this is an actual problem that needs solving.

The second part is about how to overcome these challenges, both by describing likely scenarios (plucked from real-life experiece) with suggested approaches, and by equipping attendees with the ability to adapt to the new and unpredictable challenges that inevitably arise on every project.

I'd also love to spend time talking through some scenarios people are facing or have faced in the past, to get some interaction going. We've all been there at some point and it's always great to hear from people dealing with the same issues.

The target audience is:

• anyone who is new to agile or considering it
• vendors who have struggled with agile delivery
• clients who have struggled with agile projects
• like-minded people who have already come to this realisation but just want to be reassured
• hard-liners who don't agree that we should adapt methodologies under any circumstances (you will be amazed by what I've seen and heard!)