how to scale product development when you no longer fit in one room
DESCRIPTION
When growing a startup product development you encounter major challenges: How do you scale your product development teams? How do you keep as fast and responsive as you used to be? And how do you leverage the existing knowledge? In this talk I’ll show a couple of practices and rituals based around a Kanban board which captured our whole product development efforts with about 30 participants. I’ll show the design of the Kanban board, the policies and meetings around it and the personal duties ranging from a developer to a product manager up to the CEO. I will also compare it to other approaches from the community and what our lessons learned are.TRANSCRIPT
Matthias Lübken The product guy @luebken
How to scale product development when you no longer fit in one room
About me• Software Developer • Agile Coach • Director of software
development • Product Manager
Next generation PaaS for grownups. Based on Docker. Visit http://giantswarm.io
Our setting• Company:
• A startup with product / market fit • Process:
• Just do whatever works, and if you get stuck, ask someone in the room.
• Challenge: • Scale product development • 1 4 teams. 7 30 colleagues.
Our (implicit) vision
“No process is a good process
“It’s about the people and their interactions
Topics• Cross functional teams • Adaptive product roadmap • Feedback in dev teams • Continuous improvement • Other ideas
(Cross) functional teams
Devel- opment
Product
Feature Team
Devel- opment
Product
Feature Team
Feature Team
Feature Team
Devel- opment
Product
Feature Team
Feature Team
Functional Team
Feature Team
Devel- opment
Product
Feature Team
Feature Team
Functional Team
Community of practice
Lessons learned• Slicing is hard • Restructuring is painful • Clear goal is crucial
Adaptive product roadmap
Our Kanban Board
Product Jour Fixe
CPO
Developer
POs
CEO/CTO
ArchitectOther
Agile Coach
Sprint Reviews
Lessons learned• High discipline needed • Be prepared for hard questions
Feedback in dev teams
Lessons learned• Be open to new ideas • Coach teams
Continuous improvement
If you do one thing in your process do retrospectives.“
Small and big retrospectives
Authority boards
see mangement30.com
Lessons learned• Optimise locally and globally • Take the time needed • Be a good pace maker • Make authority clear
Other ideas
No Blueprints• Blue Prints like SAFe don’t work • They are against all our instincts
“Dave Snowden Put brutally SAFe seemed to be PRINCE II camouflaged in Agile language. ... SAFe is not only a betrayal of the promise offered by AGILE but is a massive retrograde step giving the managerial class an excuse to avoid any significant change.
Agile Scaling Cycle
• Based principles and working Agile teams
• "Autonomous business facing teams taking ownership of their process.” @StefanRoock
• http://scaledprinciples.org/
Jimdo• Created culture manual !!!!
• Feel good manager • Weekly Teamverløtung • Goal #1 • Open Prio Meetings
> acknowledge mistakes > have fun > strive for the best > ok to be crazy > no deadlines
http://bit.ly/jimdostory
•Pick examples that fit •Do collaborative change •Know your runway
Take aways
Matthias Lübken The product guy @luebken
It’s hard but fun!
Next generation PaaS for grownups. Based on Docker. Visit http://giantswarm.io