The story of how The Washington Post moved from waterfall to agile methodology for the creation of a new product: TastePost.

1. Innovation through Iteration

2. Background

3. Background

4. Washington Post IT Unit
• About 140 people
• Supports operations of the newspaper and some operations at other
Washington Post Company affiliates, including:
• Publishing
• Advertising
• Circulation
• Syndication
• Accounting
• Production

5. Washington Post Web Solutions

7. Traditional projects flowed like a waterfall
http://flickr.com/photos/24028533@N03/2297190795/

8. The Waterfall: Measure twice, cut once
• Requirements Doc
• Known specs
• Wireframes
• Architecture Diagrams
Discovery • Working Build
Design • Test Scripts
Development
• Discrete phases
Testing
• Launch
• Tight discipline
Deployment
• Specific and unchanging requirements
• Design and development standards
The goal: Build the thing right.

9. Waterfall works well for large-scale projects
• When it's familiar territory
• Involve high levels of integration with existing
systems
• When working prototypes for user feedback are
more expensive or difficult to produce (e.g.,
non-web)

10. Waterfall projects
! Familiar territory !
Simple transactions !
Integration with DSI

11. Waterfall projects
" Familiar territory "
Simple transactions "
Integration with PAS

12. Potential effects of waterfall projects
• Simplified project governance (Senior Management)
• Bigger projects mean fewer per year to track
• Fixed scope keep stakeholders/project team aligned
• Hoarding of IT resources through project bloat (at Discovery)
• More risk that changing business needs will outpace development
• Inaccurate LOE and schedule estimates
• Tendency toward "Launch and move on" mentality

13. Effect on project managers

14. Effect on project managers

15. When things go wrong in the waterfall
“By the time the site launched it
looked completely different from
what we had envisioned.”
– Designer “We had to cut some corners –
documentation, user testing,
support training – but we made
the date.” – Project Team
“By the time the project finished,
the business needs had totally
changed.” – Business Analyst “If I knew in the beginning what
I know now, we would have
made a very different site.”
– Business Client
“Hey, you approved it.”
– PM

16. Knowledge gap when building unknown solutions
knowledge
volume
decisions
Discovery
Design
Development
Testing
Deployment v1.0

17. So that was then. . . .
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18. Business in transition

19. Business in transition

20. Strategic Focus: Innovation
•“We actively develop new revenue streams from non-traditional
sources.”
•“We introduce and support new brands, selectively, when we
believe that doing so allows us to achieve the full potential an
opportunity may afford.”
•“We make bets on ideas that can have material impact even if
they entail high risk. We invest in small-scale experiments to
learn more about areas of strategic opportunity where
uncertainty is high. More than ever, responsible innovation is
necessary for our success.”
•“Because of the high level of marketplace uncertainty, we
regularly monitor and revisit our strategies, being willing and

21. Where IT comes in
Align our methodologies to support innovation. . .
• Partner with the business to explore and realize new revenue streams
• Enable those “bets” and “small-scale experiments”
• Improve speed to market; bring value faster
. . . While we remain true to our core mission of supporting the
traditional business

22. A shift in emphasis
Waterfall:
Build the thing right.
Iterative:
Build the right thing.

23. An alternate approach: Iterative
T I M E
Discovery
Design
Development
Testing
Deployment v1.0

24. An alternate approach: Iterative
ß ß ß ß ß
T I M E
• Better fit for product innovation
• Speed to market with beta releases
• Betas prove/refine the concept
• Earlier value generation
• More user feedback, which guides the next iterations
The goal: Build the right thing.

25. Iterative vs. incremental
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spielzimmer/429215172/
Got the whole brick wall metaphor from Jeff Patton talking to Jared Spool.
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2008/08/05/spoolcast-ux-in-an-agile-environment-with-jeff-patton/

27. Why Vine?
• Looked at many topics
• Beer/Wine/Spirits meets three criteria:
• Consumer Passion
• Advertiser dollars in market that we don’t get
• Consumer spending
• Negatives
• Variation in state laws (MD/VA/DC)
• Local retailer needs
• Is the universe of local wine lovers large enough?

28. Initial idea

29. Pilot project: Vine

30. The Vine Betas
• Registration
• User Profiles
• Coupons
• Product blog • Analytics
• Credit Card
• Program info • Monitoring
• Wine organizer • Vine content • Customer feedback
• Chat
• Social
Networking

31. The Vine Betas

32. Scrum training and adoption

33. Scrum roles and deliverables
• Product backlog
• Single product owner on the business side who is part of the team
• 30-day sprints
• Self-managing teams
• Technically, no project manager. Instead, ScrumMaster.
• Streamlined documentation

34. Product backlog

35. Sprint task list

36. System Documentation

37. Member home page

38. Featured Selections/Discounts

39. Member Content/Events

40. “My bar/cellar”

41. Store/Retrieve bottles

42. Thoughts/Lessons so far
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43. Challenges/Risks with iterative products
• Do you ever get the feeling
that you’re surrounded by
total and complete chaos?
• Organizational inertia, cultural
change
• Integration with enterprise systems
• Transition from Beta to bulletproof
• Abandoning unsuccessful Betas

44. Sprint zero is critical.

45. Not every iteration is a public release
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42dreams/2452861482/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cursedthing/448971179/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/basykes/34279052
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ayelie/441101223/

46. Not every iteration is a release
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kellysue/2831068087/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/clevercupcakes/3229153310/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bossacafez/268979524/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/flirtykitty/9226535/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/basykes/34279052

47. Modular code enables re-use
ß ß ß
Credit Card Google Maps
Shopping Cart
Processing Integration
ß ß ß
Social Mobile Text
Networking Browsing Messaging
ß
ß
Rating/
Video Player Reviewing

48. Iterative works well. . .
• When the feature set is evolving
• Bets on ideas; small-scale experiments
• Minimal IT investment
• Low-cost failure
• Because it’s in line with the advantages of the web
• Easier to update, enhance, evolve
• Instant customer feedback
• Incremental releases of new functionality (Betas)
• Product improves as more people use it

49. That’s it.
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50. Contact
Dave Burke
dave@daveburke.com
twitter.com/daveburke
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