Agile Development from a Product Management Perspective

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Agile Development from a Product Management
Perspective
Scott CressmanTechnical Product Manager, Sophos
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Agenda

• How Sophos Vancouver works
• The Retrospective
• Conclusion
• Q A

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How Sophos Vancouver Works
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History

• Converted to eXtreme Programming in 2005
• Senior-level champion was important
• Disruptive, but turned things around
• Continuously evolving processes

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Today

• Relatively mature processes
• Still different among teams
• Affected by project program management
  requirements
• Still evolving

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XP Processes

• Release planning
• Iterations
• Stand-ups
• Pair programming
• Retrospectives
• Test driven development
• Story test driven development

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• Dividing up the Product Management duties

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Project Framework

• Translation layer
• High-level Project Management
• XP happens underneath on the day-to-day level

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The Retrospective
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The Retrospective

• Release Planning
• Iterations
• Acceptance
• Testing
• Communicating Externally
• Estimation
• Releasing
• Retrospectives
• Loose Ends

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Release Planning

• Get everyone on board
• PRD Project framework
• Frequent updates

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Release Planning

• Management tests
• Not SMART enough
• Business-related goals often out of teams control

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Release Planning

• Release planning without the entire team
• Everyone not on board
• Different levels of understanding

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Release Planning
Behaviour driven development

• Customer doing QAs job
• Overloads the customer
• Turns QA into robots

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Release Planning

• Thorough story preparation
• Spirit of a story
• Mockups
• Consideration of a story in the context of the
  release

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Release Planning

• Internal releases
• Communicates progress
• Communicates quality
• Gather feedback with time to react

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Release Planning

• Re-release planning
• Use yesterdays weather
• Do at least once in a project
• Do when the landscape changes

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The Retrospective

• Release Planning
• Iterations
• Acceptance
• Testing
• Communicating Externally
• Estimation
• Releasing
• Retrospectives
• Loose Ends

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Iterations

• Linear Development

• Ideal, but not realistic
• You cant know what you dont know
• Communicate well instead

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Iterations

• Micro-managing
• Require accountability
• Provide direction
• Be reasonable

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Iterations

• Communicating business events
• Gets team emotionally invested
• Subconscious prioritization, sense of urgency

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Iterations

• Fixed-length iterations
• Base on story size
• Dont be afraid to mix it up

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The Retrospective

• Release Planning
• Iterations
• Acceptance
• Testing
• Communicating Externally
• Estimation
• Releasing
• Retrospectives
• Loose Ends

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Acceptance

• Strict acceptance expectations
• Collective agreement on requirements
• Be consistent
• Be firm!

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Acceptance

• Spend time accepting test cases
• Story expectation transfer
• Test brainstorming
• Decreases subsequent thrash

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The Retrospective

• Release Planning
• Iterations
• Acceptance
• Testing
• Communicating Externally
• Estimation
• Releasing
• Retrospectives
• Loose Ends

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Testing

• Dev QA Pairing
• Breaks down the fence
• Decreases thrash
• Whole greater than the sum of its parts

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Testing

• Keeping nightly A8N green
• Infrastructure is fragile
• Sloppy check-ins
• Changed the definition of green to be 95
  passing

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Testing

• Automating tests
• Over 60 of tests are automated
• Makes releasing easier faster

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The Retrospective

• Release Planning
• Iterations
• Acceptance
• Testing
• Communicating Externally
• Estimation
• Releasing
• Retrospectives
• Loose Ends

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Communicating externally

• Translating to the rest of the organization
• Completely agile organizations do not exist
• Translate to non-agile departments

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Communicating externally

• Constant honest communication
• Frequent updates
• Honesty they will find out the truth eventually!

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The Retrospective

• Release Planning
• Iterations
• Acceptance
• Testing
• Communicating Externally
• Estimation
• Releasing
• Retrospectives
• Loose Ends

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Estimation

• Estimation improvement
• Requires deliberate effort
• Accountability is key

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Estimation

• NUTs (AKA story points)
• Standardize definition of a story point
• Decrease chance of misunderstandings

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The Retrospective

• Release Planning
• Iterations
• Acceptance
• Testing
• Communicating Externally
• Estimation
• Releasing
• Retrospectives
• Loose Ends

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Releasing

• Release criteria
• Know when youre done
• Gut feel is still a valid metric!

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The Retrospective

• Release Planning
• Iterations
• Acceptance
• Testing
• Communicating Externally
• Estimation
• Releasing
• Retrospectives
• Loose Ends

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Retrospectives

• Retrospectives
• Weigh the importance of results
• Avoid navel gazing

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The Retrospective

• Release Planning
• Iterations
• Acceptance
• Testing
• Communicating Externally
• Estimation
• Releasing
• Retrospectives
• Loose Ends

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Loose ends

• Standardization across teams
• Teams naturally tend to grow apart
• Deliberate communication can offset this

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Loose ends

• Lack of domain knowledge on team
• Ignorance not OK just because you have a domain
  expert
• Should keep up on industry
• Team needs to take an interest!

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Loose ends

• Implementing strong process
• Agile ? no process!
• Promote positive behaviours
• Change when appropriate

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Loose ends

• Poster A.D.D
• Less is more!
• Make content useful and relevant
• Regular audits are necessary

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Loose ends

• Addressing tech debt
• Happens, but isnt generally planned
• Continue to build up tech debt
• Hasnt hurt usyet

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Loose ends

• Managing by metrics
• Ensure metrics will promote desired behaviours
• Ensure they are actionable

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Loose ends

• Tools to support agile process
• No tools have done exactly what we wanted
• Should provide complete visibility
• Any suggestions?

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Loose ends

• Remove disruptive team members
• Get the wrong people off the bus
• Tough, but necessary
• Dont be afraid!

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Conclusion
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Q A