kickstart your product backlog with innovation games
DESCRIPTION
How to start your Scrum project? How to initialize your product backlog? You are not alone, in most agile projects, managing the product backlog remains a complex and difficult activity. Scrum said that it's the Product Owner that manage the product backlog but it does not tell us how (It's a framework you know). However, the product owners are people from the business. They have little or no experience with Agile and what it means in term of contribution to the project. How to involve a group of users in the creation of product backlog without that they feel cheated or ignored? How to prioritize dozens or even hundreds of user stories of varying sizes with a group of users representing different needs with conflicting interests? The Innovation Games are techniques that can address these issues. The art is to combine these methods with a view to a common vision to emerge as an initial product backlog that will help the Scrum team to start the project on a solid foundation. Presented at Agile Tour Brussels 2013TRANSCRIPT
Kickstart your Product Backlog
with Innovation Games
#atbru 2013
@FredVandaele
Context
European Commission
"New" domain
Low priority
Limited resources
Many stakeholders
• Operational Units
• Administrative Units
• Financial Service
• Legal Service
• …
Stakeholders
After 6 months, we have …
– Pile of documents
– Pile of diagrams,
– …
… let's do it!
A first « Waterfall » try
And now ladies and gentlemen …
Why it failed?
• No shared vision
• No clear priorities
• Centifugal forces
Let's try it differently!
Innovation Games Playing games is serious!
Innovation here!
To explore and Discover
Source: innovationgames.com
In many cases in life we know what B looks like...
Clear Goal
Fuzzy Goal
In creative work we don’t...
Source: innovationgames.com
The Game universe
Boundaries
Facilitator Observers
Goal
Time + Space
Rules
Players
Artifacts
From ideas to action …
Discover Shape Prioritize Act
Source: innovationgames.com
Shape
What is it made of?
How does it work?
What does that look like?
Game: "Start your day"
To understand When and How Your Customer Uses Your Product
"Describe your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly events related to your use of the product"
Game: "Start your day"
Why it works?
We remember what's just append but we forget what we did in the past …
Memory is activated by context
• A time line of User's needs
• A clear view of the whole process
• Customers shared their needs &
Vision
Output
Some work here …
• We need a simple way to structure our information
• We like stickies on a wall
As an Agile Team, we want to organize our user stories into a Story Maps.
Card Mapping
Prioritize
How can we prioritize?
What to do first?
What to do in the next weeks?
Game: "Buy a feature"
Create a list of features with estimated cost
Distibute money … but not too much ;-)
Customers buy features that they want
Game: "Buy a feature"
Why it works?
Users see the big picture & decide
Priorities emerge from discussion
Ppl negotiate to optimize
Output
A subset of requirements
selected by
stakeholders
A clear Scope
Game : "Prune the product Tree"
Start with a very large tree
Write features on index cards
Place desired features around the tree, defining the next phase of its growth
Game : "Prune the product Tree"
Why it works?
We trend to put our efforts behind the most important features …
… sometimes this means that we put too little effort behind the features that are needed to complete the product
KANO
"Performance" needs
"Basic" needs
Excitement needs or Delighters
Customer Satisfaction
Degree of Implementation
Delight
Immediate happiness
Not unhappy
Disappointed
We have our first MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
& Path of development
Output
Act
How to plan the work?
How to do it now?
And…?
It works !!
1 month: first version is online
6 months: the product is there !
Retrospective
Don't start a product
by the "beginning"
Start by the most valuable stuff!
Retrospective
Identify questions that matter
Retrospective
Use several games,
mix techniques
Retrospective
Prepare, Prepare, Prepare,
Work as a Team
Retrospective
Fun is good for creativity
Activates your Right-brain!
Thanks!
@fredvandaele