Many developers or maintainers do not care about what and why are they doing. They say they just do their job. But how can they make decisions, how can they design the solution if they do not now the vision, the why behind?
This presentation from Agilia Budapest conference deals with the importance of knowing the vision, needs, understanding it and shows how it forms the teams, daily cooperation, daily decisions and closes the loop again back by updating the vision.
Don't bother me with product vision I'm just coding!
1. Don‘t bother me with product vision!
I am just doing my job!
Jaroslav Procházka, Ph.D.
Aguarra
2. About me …
• Agile, Lean, ITIL, soft skills
• Start-ups / entrepreneurs
• Value thinking and living
• 14 years in IT
• 10 years lectures/research
• Books:
• Operate IT differently. Grada (Czech)
• Team Agile Testing
• ITIL story
• Lean IT in large: Stopping the negative
Aguarra courses:
• High performing teams
• Agile&Lean S&M
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 2
spiral. Lulu
Blogging:
• www.agilia.cz/blog
• www.HRkavarna.cz
• en.differ.cz
3. Poland: Highway parts not met
Common
goal?
Source:
idnes.cz
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 3
4. Product development
chronicle: Common goal?
Customers willing to pay more
Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4
2008
Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4
2009
Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4
2010
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 4
Customer’s
demand
Developers’ layoffs
Targeted
utilization
level
Hiring new
developers
New developers available
Developers ready
to bring value
Goals:
• Industry: profit
• Line: utilization
• Country: headcount
5. Growing technical
debt (team says)
RED NUMBERS
5
Complicated
maintenance
Overdue
features
Customer
pushing on
lower costs
Short term
thinking (YES
to all reqs.)
Hard to
estimate
feature delivery
dates
Push on
new sales
Overloaded
team
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz
6. The biggest waste in product development?
Standish Group Chaos Reports
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 6
7. Based on what you:
accept or decline new product features?
predict new feature delivery date (e.g. for marketing unit)
design product architecture?
make daily design decisions?
use incident solutions/workarounds?
decide whether to fix incident immediately or wait a bit and
prolong the resolution time not to repeat it?
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 7
10. But we know what the value is!
…. Really?
It is great to be
remotely in touch
with my customers
Only what I need is
quality Internet
connection
But what makes me
angry are these
recurring outages …
My job is to fix
incidents
OMG!
Again an outage!!!
#&*#$*#!!!
Yeaaah, I
delivered value!
I fixed incident
quickly
I will kill
them!!!
Users
will be
happy …
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 10
11. Start with the following questions:
1/ What is the problem we are trying to solve?
2/ Why is it important for you? Why you care?
3/ What is the (visible) value for the customer?
... and to succeed:
3/ Involve and enggage people
4/ Prototype and verify possible solutions
5/ Share this among the whole company!!!
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 11
13. Do it together with the teams
Share it continuously
Have it visible in team room
Discuss and update it regularly
Make decisions based on it
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 13
14. Needs and values from real products
Utility meters product:
Need (of customer and its customers):
To gather data for energy invoicing
People don’t want to be at home to
open flats and assist data gathering
Invoicing and payment processed to
get the energies
Value:
Remote automatic data gathering
from meters
e-invoicing
Web filter product
Need:
Secure and efficient working
environment
Saved costs for network capacity
Value:
Wide enough bandwidth for working
tasks by blocking not approved
streaming and downloads
Virus and phishing avoidance
Aguarra, s.r.o., Lisabonská 2394/4, 190 00 Praha 9, www.aguarra.cz 14
15. Product owner dual role
1. Visionary and owner
What should the product be like?
Owning, creating, changing the vision
Owning, prioritizing the backlog
2. Daily coach
Sharing the vision among the product, support,
maintenance and sales teams daily to support their
daily decisions
Aguarra, s.r.o., Lisabonská 2394/4, 190 00 Praha 9, www.aguarra.cz 15
16. Observe what customers do
Accompany sales on their way to customers
Listen what users say (not just the loud ones)
Mine what they really need out of these
Observe also market trends and predictions
(IT support, new tech and approaches)
Observe employment trends
(remote work, social net, generation Y habits)
Visit domain conferences
Share, share, share... within the company, among the management, sales,
delivery teams, support teams
Product
Owner role
regarding
vision
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 16
17. Go & See principle:
Team in media domain
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 17
19. 1/ Vision: clear value & understanding
Problem value
Go & See understanding
Regular sharing
understanding
decision making
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 19
20. 2/ Core features: what to do & decision making
Feature 1 High
Feature 2 High
Feature 3 High
-------------------------
Feature 4 Middle
Feature 5 Middle
-------------------------
Feature 6 Low
Feature X Low
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 20
21. 3/ Structure: organizing teams & technical
decisions
Feature 1 High
Feature 2 High
Feature 3 High
-------------------------
Feature 4 Middle
Feature 5 Middle
-------------------------
Feature 6 Low
Feature X Low
Feature Team 1
-------------------
Story 1A
Story 1B
Story 1C
Feature Team 2
-------------------
Story 2A
Story 2B
Story 2C
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 21
22. 4/ Design: communication and feedback
Team backlog
-----------------
Story 1A
Story 1B
Story 1C Team capacity
Team velocity
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 22
23. 5/ Time, info: roadmap, velocity, team capacity
Feature 1 High
Feature 2 High
Feature 3 High
-------------------------
Feature 4 Middle
Feature 5 Middle
-------------------------
Feature 6 Low
Feature X Low
Team capacity
Team velocity
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 23
24. Takeaways
Solving customer needs value
Daily decision making based on vision
Go & see understanding
Sharing & coaching understanding
Value vs. Costs waste reduction
Common goal value, sharing, cooperation
Feature
Team 1
---------
Story 1A
Story 1B
Story 1C
Aguarra, s.r.o., Plzeňská 157 / 98 Praha 5, www.aguarra.cz 24
Typical issues we face daily in product development
Never or rarely used features!!!
Shift in thinking, different attitude and mindset
Another example: telco network monitoring
ITIL Business Case
RUP Vision document
A3 document
Tools to identify the value, needs:
Business Model Canvas
Lean Canvas
Why is this important?
The story of one media team:
Years delay, misunderstood requirements, unhappy team as well as customer and company
Visit in media group – quite huge shift!
Google your customer on SD
Regular activity
Regular activity, decision making on business level