Agility In Innovation - Delivering Breakthrough Products
Nils DavisDirector of Product Management
Accept Software
Agenda
• Introduction• The challenges of product management• Agile Value Management• Agile and the innovation lifecycle
Introduction
Nils Davis, Director of Product Management– 15+ years in product management– At Accept Software for 3 1/2 years– The ultimate “dog-fooder”
Accept Software:– Mission: Improve product innovation success– 75+ customers, multiple industries– Integrated software suite for ideation, portfolio, and
requirements management
The Product Manager’s DilemmaHow do I keep track?
What is most important?
Who wants what?
Customer requests from Field Sales
Great ideas in e-mail
Notes from a coworker
Phone calls from Support
Existing requirements
The Product Manager’s DilemmaWhich business
needs do I focus on? How can I help my
customers be successful?
Business strategies
Critical customers
Technology and business risks
Competitive gaps and advantages
Release management
We Have Market Knowledge
• Consider the difference:The product must support features X and Y because 73% of customers say they want it.
• VersusThe product must support features X and Y because 73% of customers say they want it, including the majority of buyer persona who perceive them as critical points of comparison. These features will reduce the time it takes to close sales, increase our win rate, and strengthen our reception by analysts.
• (From Travis Jenson’s “Software Maven” blog)
Market segment
Competitive differentiator
Business objective
Competitive differentiator Marketing theme
• Without a framework for capturing knowledge, importance, and commitments:– Deferred requirements get lost when new versions are
defined– It’s impossible to know which customer requests are important– Sales makes a lot of commitments that we cannot track– Stakeholders or important customers ‘hijack’ the roadmap– Vision for product is set aside for putting out fires associated with high priority customers– It’s impossible for me to tell what’s going to be in the new product– Releases are often late because scope changes can’t be managed– Big releases with lots of requirements always slip; call for endless point and patch releases that have to be shipped – Strategy and competitive gaps never get addressed
• Bad productivity. Bad decisions. Misunderstandings. Miscommunication. Unsuccessful products.
"Requirements Chaos"
Capturing Market KnowledgeCustomers
ImportanceRequirements
• Basic agile approaches are straining when it comes to– Enterprise scale– Customer needs– Competitive issues– Corporate strategy
• Tom Grant of Forrester reports, based on his attendance at the Agile 2009 conference, that:– Agile is changing - its successor still worries about build
scripts, daily Scrum meetings, and IDE plug-ins, but it recognizes the sovereignty of business objectives, and governs jointly with other methodologies
How Is Agile Changing?
“Agile Value Management”
• Integrates agile explicitly into the strategic product innovation cycle
• Ensures (agile) product plans are aligned with corporate strategy
• Adds "intelligence" to your product backlog– Link user stories to customer needs, competitive
threats, business risks, and company strategy• Result: strategic value is driving every step,
from prioritization to delivery
Importance vs. Cost
Inexpensive And Valuable
AVM Benefits Everyone
14Accept Proprietary and Confidential
Product Owners More scientific and analytic
approach to improving decision certainty
TeamsImproved coordination to
manage dependencies and trade-offs throughout the
Agile cycle
ScrumMastersBetter visibility and
resource management during sprints
Software DevelopersBetter insight into “why?”
to ensure development aligns with market and
strategy
Enterprise Agile
• Enterprise-size efforts challenge traditional agile• “Regular” agile breaks down• But enterprises need agile• Agile needs a few new twists to work in the
enterprise
• Dean Leffingwell, Scaling Software Agility (scalingsoftwareagility.wordpress.com)
Agile Changes In Enterprise
• “Intelligent” backlog still applies– But usually with a hierarchy of requirements, not
just a single level• Release “train”
– Synchronized sprints– Sprint status rolled up to release level
• Separate architecture “runway”
Agile Enterprise “Big Picture”• (From Dean Leffingwell’s Agile 2009 Conference presentation)
Product Innovation
• Goal: Grow top line revenue (new products)• Obstacle: Disruptive innovations have high
reward AND high risk– Manage risk by:– Bringing customers deeper into the innovation
process– Removing barriers that cause mistakes along the way
• Agile enables you to deliver “early and often” to test the market and concept
Leading Innovation
• (From Bob Sutton’s “21 Tips for Leading Innovation” – bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog)
• 2. Treat innovation as an import-export business. Keep trying to bring in ideas from outside your group or organization, keep trying to show and tell others about your ideas, and blend them all together.
• 4. Treat your beliefs as “strong opinions, weakly held.”
• 6. Say “I don’t know” on a regular basis.
Leading Innovation
• 17. Have the confidence and resolve to make tough decisions, stop your people from whining about the decisions made, and to get on with implementing them.
• 18. Kill a lot of ideas, including a lot of good ideas.
• 21. Innovation requires selling your ideas. The greatest innovators, from Edison to Jobs, are gifted at generating excitement and sales. If you can't or won't sell, team-up with someone who can.
Take Aways
• Prioritizing the product backlog is hard – use analytics
• For larger teams, augment agile with “agile value management”
• Enterprise products need even bigger changes in agile methodologies
• Agile helps with breakthrough innovation by getting you to market faster and cheaper
