how to use agile for roadmapping and be successful at it

How to use Agile for product road -mapping and be successful at it ?

© ThoughtWorks 2010 1

Anupam Kundu

Session Goal

Who is a Product

How Agile helps Product Business


Q&A

Product Owner?

helps Product Owner?

Agile planning primer for

Product OwnerThe Story So

Far...

BusinessFundamentals

Session Goal

High -performing agile teams need


agile teams need right direction and directorto build successful products



What do I want?



What do I need to get it?



How will I get there?

The most important question is


WHAT WE BUILD


WHAT WE BUILD not

HOW WE BUILD

Product

Management

Engineering &

Development

Who is a Product Owner?

…who makes decisions about what the product should do while


Management

Operations

&

Support

Marketing &

Sales

should do while taking into account what people who make buying decisions actually want...

Jeff Patton

•Subject Matter Expert– Understand the domain well

enough to envision a product

•End-User Advocate

•Business Advocate

– Understand the needs of the organization paying for the software and selects a mix of features that cater to their goals

•Communicator



•End-User Advocate– Describe the product with

understanding of users and use, and a product that best serves both

•Customer Advocate– Understand the needs of the

business buying the product and select a mix of features valuable to the customer

•Communicator

– Capable of communicating vision and intent to the team and the stakeholders alike

•Decision Maker

– Given a variety of conflicting goals and opinions be the final logical decision maker about what goes into a release

…high-performing class of “product-centric” development teams that characteristically support their company’s value chain, partner with both their customers and business stakeholders, and own the business results that their software delivers… Forrester Research on Product Centric Development



{ pause }


How Agile helps Product Owner?


How Agile helps Product Owner?

© ThoughtWorks 2010

Source: State of Agile Development: 3rd Annual Survey, Version One

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Agile planning primer for Product Owner


Release

What business objectives will each release achieve?

What capabilities will the release

Product Business objectives fulfilled by the product

Product Vision

PortfolioDivision level objectives and goals

Prioritized product road map

Strategy

Product roadmap and business strategyAgile planning primer

for Product Owner


Daily story backlog

Story Details

Acceptance Tests

Sprint Planning

What stories must be included in the sprint to achieve release objectives?

Iteration Plan

Sprint velocity/capacity

will the release offer?

Release plan

Product Vision

Product life cycle

16

Product Manager –Scrum Team-Constant interaction

-Faster rate of communication

-Focus on efficiency, delivery, quick releases

Product Manager –Business Sponsor Stakeholders- Business priorities, Product

Portfolio

Strategy

Agile planning primer for Product Owner


Daily

Sprint

Release

priorities,

- Strategy

-Legal obligations

- relatively slower progress of communication

Product

17

{ Do I still have your attention?! }


Case Studies published

•http://www.thoughtworks.com/simon-schuster•http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/column-articles/2650-product-road-mapping-using-agile-principles

The Story So Far...

Business Domain : Publishing and Media– re-engineer a 15 year old consumer facing site with cutting edge

technologies and social networking tools– rich experience for authors and readers with multimedia, editorial and crowd

sourced comments and reviews, content aggregation from the web and content syndication to multiple channel partners


content syndication to multiple channel partners

Beta Site Launched in 5 months – considered a big success– digital division product team earns kudos and respect across the organization

Product owner overwhelmed– new products planned by the digital division– new project requests from stakeholders across the company– continuous maintenance and upgrade of the existing site– hard to plan for new products and enhancements while dealing with

maintenance – frustrations follows soon

Now how do I

maintain this site

and also attend to

all these

enhancement

requests….


lets ask

everyone to

work morewell, its not working

for at all as I

expected…

how the h*** do I

manage this?

•Need help with product backlog maintenance

•Team needs to understand the roadmap and what they are working on

•Build up trust with the stakeholders in terms of prioritization of work

requests

• Build social connection and transparency across the teams

•More predictability of delivery, releases

•Sustainable pace

•What is the business value for the product?

The Story So Far...

•Is the new feature considered a legal obligation for the market?

•Does the new product provide a distinct competitive advantage in the marketplace?

•How much can the proposed product leverage the newly created infrastructure?

•Which product can help launch or promote new or emerging lines of business?


•Which product can help launch or promote new or emerging lines of business?

•Will the new product allow the stakeholders to reach and exploit new marketing geographies?

•How much will it cost to launch the new product?

•Is there a need to build follow-up modules to the product?

•Is this a new product a catch-up with rest of the players in the market?

•Can we quickly identify multiple small tasks and create a product of value for the internal web / content admin team?

The Story So Far...

identification prioritization exploration confirmation


Identification

– business and technology stakeholders brainstorm new products, features and ideas along with the product owner

– (ranked) product roadmap with high level business visions and goals outlined for the highest priority projects and features

– mainly product owners ( & business analysts) and business stakeholders


The Story So Far...


Prioritization

– discuss current state of product backlog with the team– identify initial risks and assumptions from prioritized products– order of magnitude estimates for the prioritized products– product owners ( & business analysts), scrum master, dev team


The Story So Far...


Exploration

– spike technology integration touch points– granular estimates– draft release plan of priority products– dev team, scrum master, product owners ( & business analysts)


The Story So Far...


Confirmation

– decision to go or no-go– put products into hibernation or kill them– refine release timelines and schedules– product owners ( & business analysts), business stakeholders and

scrum master

The Story So Far...


The Story So Far...

Extend the bandwidth of the product owner– Add a dedicated Business Analyst to work as PO proxy for couple of projects– Introduce other POs in the mix with the concept of an UBER PO having the

final call on sprint priorities– Moved to 2 weeks sprint (instead of weekly sprints)

Manage the backlogs


Manage the backlogs – Reduce three backlogs to two– One backlog for high value new projects and key features– Second backlog of all low priority bugs and enhancements to the current site

Adopt Agile Principles to road-mapping process– The roadmap document is declared as a live document constantly prioritized

based on feedback from stakeholders and agile team every sprint– Greater visibility to the project team beyond the release scope by introducing

a feedback oriented collaborative approach

The Story So Far...

Productivity Improvement: team output

New Products

Maintenance

January April August December

7.00

8.00

18

20

New Products - Roadmap Success

Count of New Products Added to Roadmap Count of New Product Launched

The Story So Far...

Business goals improvement– Approx number of products added to roadmap / year:

74– Approx number of products delivered / year: 26– 2 NEW products every month!


0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00

5.00

6.00

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

1. All product owners are equal but some POs are more equal than others – think of the ϋber PO

2. Rapid portfolio management gives ability to change roadmap direction every sprint

3. Providing visibility into the

The Story So Far...


3. Providing visibility into the roadmap increases trust and accountability within the stakeholders

4. Cross pollination of ideas (during road-mapping ) as the agile team gets involved

5. Early and frequent collaboration is a risk mitigation tactic

Q&A


References

1. http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/scrum-xp-from-the-trenches2. http://www.scrumalliance.org/3. http://agilemanifesto.org/4. http://www.implementingscrum.com5. www.mountaingoat.com – Mike Cohn6. www.agileproductdesign.com – Jeff Patton7. http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/articles/415-the-agile-pyramid-

aligning-the-corporate-strategy-with-agility – Joe Krebs8. http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/column-articles/2650-product-


8. http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/column-articles/2650-product-road-mapping-using-agile-principles

9. http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/column-articles/2806-project-portfolio-decisionsdecisions-for-now

10. Agile Development: Mainstream Adoption Has Changed Agility – Jan, 2010 Forrester Research

11. Product-Centric Development Is A Hot New Trend – Dec, 2009 Forrester Research

12. Design Comics 13. Microsoft Office ClipArt14. All beloved ThoughtWorkers

•agile project management•agile coaching for product owners•global software delivery expertise

Anupam Kundu Lead Consultant, [email protected]@gmail.com

About the Speaker


•global software delivery expertise

•12+ years experience•Developer, Business Analyst, Architect, Offshore Coordinator, Project Manager, Pre sales, Account Management •Author

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