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Being sensible with sensitivity


One of my first projects as a scrum master was to develop a product that would be used by teenage girls and mothers who are afraid of an unexpected pregnancy.

I had to work with my clients on this project that was sensitive in nature on multiple grounds.

Sensitivity #1:

I was working with women on a topic related to measuring menstrual cycles and ovulation periods. It is not easy for people in India to hear a guy talk about menstrual cycles so openly.

I had to balance between being sensible on how do we treat the entire topic as an objective discussion to shape the product while at the same time not seem like turning women into objects. It was a tight rope but we did it.

Sensitivity #2:

This was a realm that fell between medical and religious. The stand that the product took was not overtly endorsed by the medical fraternity in India. It was a new methodology that had data that was not collected by medical fraternity and hence concerns were there.

This was a blessing in disguise since we did not fall under the ambit of medical products. We still designed the product to respect the privacy and concerns of the users.

Sensitivity #3:

The stand of the product was something that was supported by the Roman catholic church. This brought concerns on the product being used for christian missionaries to further christianity and its ideas instead of being scientifically backed by data. This was the most sensitive issue of all the 3 that I had to handle.

We had to balance it since we were presenting it to the USAID at New Delhi and were not sure where the sensitivity lay. USAID was the primary sponsor for the product. We choose to ignore the stand of a specific religion and rather focussed on how we worked around the user’s preference for the product to talk about a taboo topic and be non-instrusive.

Working as a scrum master and a product owner on the development of a non-conventional software product was very interesting. Being sensible when handling these sensitivities was a very good learning for me.

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