Lesson 4: Building Solutions with Agile Product Delivery Flashcards
Why Customer Centricity?
Customer-centric Enterprises deliver whole-product Solutions that are designed with a deep understanding of Customer needs.
Customer-centric businesses generate
- greater profits
- increased employee engagement
- more satisfied customers
Customer-centric governments and nonprofits create
the resiliency, sustainability, and alignment needed to full fill their mission.
Customer Centricity mindset
Whenever a customer-centric Enterprise makes a decision, it fully considers the effect it will have on its end users.
What is Design Thinking?
Design Thinking is an iterative Solution development process that promotes a holistic approach to delighting stakeholders.
Use personas to understand Customers
Personal are fictional characters based upon your research. They represent the different people who might use your product or Solution in a similar way.
- Convey the problems they’re facing in context (i.e., their work environment) and key triggers for using the product
- Capture rich, concise information (photographs, family stories, jobs, etc.) that inspire great products without unnecessary details
Empathy Maps
Use them to identify with Customers
- The empathy map is a tool that helps teams develop deep, shared understanding and empathy for the Customer
- Use it to design better user experiences and Value Streams
- Who are we empathizing with?
- What do they hear?
- What do they do?
- What do they think and feel?
- What do they say?
- What do they see?
- What do they need to do?
Journey Maps
Use this to design the end-to-end Customer Experience
Story Maps
Use this to capture workflows
Features are managed through
Program Backlog, which is the holding area for upcoming Features, that will address user needs and deliver business benefits for a single Agile Release Train (ART).
The Vision
is a description of the future state of the product. It aligns everyone on the product’s direction.
- How will our product solve our customer’s problems?
- What Features does it have?
- How will it differentiate us?
- What Nonfunctional Requirements does it deliver?
Features represent
the work for the Agile Release Train
- Feature is an an industry-standard term familiar to marketing and Product Management
- Benefit Hypothesis justifies Feature Implementation cost and provides business perspective when making scope decisions
- Acceptance Criteria are typically defined during Program Backlog refinement
- Reflect functional and nonfunctional requirements
- Fits in one PI
Feature
an industry-standard term familiar to marketing and Product Management
Benefit Hypothesis
Justifies Feature Implementation cost and provides business perspective when making scope decisions
Acceptance Criteria
are typically defined during Program Backlog refinement
Features are implemented by
Stories
Stories are
small increments of value that can be developed in days and are relatively easy to estimate
Story user-voice form captures
role, activity, and goal
Features fit in
one PI for one ART
Stories fit in
one iteration for one Team
Story points are
Relative. They are not connected to any specific unit of measure.
Apply estimating poker for
fast, relative estimating.
- It combines expert opinion, analogy, and disaggregation for quick but reliable estimates
- All team members participate
Estimation is a whole-team exercise that
- Increases accuracy by including all perspectives
- Builds understanding
- Creates shared commitment
Warning: Estimation performed by a Manager, Architect, or select group negates these benefits.
Prioritize Features for optimal ROI
In a flow system, job sequencing is the key to improving economic outcomes.
To prioritize based on Lean economics, we need to know 2 things:
- The cost of delay (CoD) in delivering value
* What is the cost to implement the valuable thing?
Components of cost of delay
User-Business Value
Time Criticality
Risk Reduction & Opportunity Enablement (RR & OE)
User-Business Value
Relative value to the customer or business.
- They prefer this over that
- Revenue impact?
- Potential penalty or other negative impact?
Time Criticality
How user/ business value decays over time
- Is there a fixed deadline?
- Will they wait for us or move to another solution?
- What is the current effect on customer satisfaction?
Risk Reduction & Opportunity Enablement (RR & OE)
What else does this do for our business
- Reduce the risk of this or future delivery?
- Is there value in the information we will receive?
- Enable new business opportunities?
Calculate WSJF with relative estimating
In order to calculate WSJF, teams need to estimate cost of delay and duration
- For duration, use job size as a quick proxy for duration
- Relative estimating is a quick technique to estimate job size and relative value
- WSJF stakeholders: Business Owners, Product Managers, Product Owners, and System Architects
Program Increment (PI) Planning
is a cadence-based face-to-face event that serves as the heartbeat of the Agile Release Train (ART), aligning all the teams on the ART to a shared mission and vision.
- Two days every 8-12 weeks (10 weeks is typical)
- Everyone attends, in person if at all possible
- Product Management owns Feature priorities
- Agile Teams own Story planning and high-level estimates
- Architect/ Engineering and UX work as intermediaries for governance, interfaces, and dependencies
The benefits of PI Planning
- Establishing face-to-face communication across all team members and stakeholders
- Aligning development to business goals with the business context, vision, and Team/ Program PI Objectives
- Identifying dependencies and fostering cross-team and cross-ART collaboration
- Providing the opportunity for ‘just the right amount’ of architecture and Lean User Experience (UX) guidance
- Matching demand to capacity, eliminating excess work in process (WIP)
- Fast decision making
Align to a mission with PI Objectives
- Objectives are business summaries of what each team intends to deliver in the upcoming PI.
- They often map directly to the Features in the backlog.
- Other examples:
- Aggregation of a set of Features
- A Milestone like a trade show
- An Enabler Feature supporting the implementation
- A major refactoring
Maintain predictability with uncommitted objectives
Uncommitted objectives help improve the predictability of delivering business value.
- They are planned and aren’t extra things teams do ‘just in case you have time’
- They are not included in the commitment, thereby making the commitment more reliable
- If a team has low confidence in meeting a PI Objective, encourage them to move it to uncommitted
- If an item has many unknowns, consider moving it to uncommitted and put in early spikes
- Uncommitted objectives do count in velocity/ capacity.
The flow of a PI Planning Event
- You will be presented with the program vision
- You will be involved in planning 2 iterations considering Stories and Features
- You will be drafting PI Objectives based on the program Vision and Features
- You will be collaborating with the Business Owners to assign business value to the PI Objectives
Actively participating in a simulated PI Planning event will enable you to:
- Experience the business benefits of establishing communication across all team members and stakeholders
- Experience estimating capacity for the Iteration
- Experience drafting PI Objectives for achieving the Program Increment and committing to the plan
- Experience managing program risks
The Management Review, at the end of day 1, does:
Management meets to make adjustments to scope and objectives based on the day’s planning.
Common Question during the Manager review include:
- What did we just learn?
- Where do we need to adjust? Vision? Scope? Team assignments?
- Where are the bottlenecks?
- What feature must be de-scoped?
- What decisions must we make between now and tomorrow to address these issues?
Planning adjustments a team may make, after a Management Review:
- Business Priorities
- Adjustment to Vision
- Changes to scope
- Realignment of work and teams
Final plan review agenda may include:
- Changes to capacity and load
- Final PI Objectives with business value
- Program risks and impediments
- Q&A session
Building the Final Plan includes:
- Final plans are collected at the front of the room
- Final plans are reviewed by all teams
- Business Owners are asked whether they accept the plan
- If so, the team’s plan and program risk sheet are brought to the front of the room
- If not, the plans stay in place, and the team continues planning after the review
Addressing program risks
After all plans have been presented, remaining program risks and impediments are discussed and categorized.
ROAMing risks:
- Resolved - Has been addressed. No longer a concern.
- Owned - Someone has taken responsibility
- Accepted - Nothing more can be done. If risk occurs, release may be compromised.
- Mitigated - Team has plan to adjust as necessary
Steps for conducting- Manage program risks activity
Step 1: Pick 1-2 risk examples.
Step 2: Read them in front of all teams and stakeholders
Step 3: Ask if anyone can own, help mitigate, or resolve the risks. Otherwise, accept as is.
Step 4: Put each risk into a corresponding quadrant of the ROAM sheet for the program.
After dependencies are resolved and risks are addressed
a confidence vote is taken by the team and program.
This commitment has 2 parts:
- Teams agree to do everything in their power to meet the agreed-to objectives
- In the event that fact patterns dictate that is is simply not achievable, teams agree to escalate immediately so that corrective action can be taken
Running a planning meeting retrospective
The PI planning event will evolve over time. Ending with a retrospective will help continuously improve it.
The Planning Meeting retrospective:
- What went well
- What didn’t
- What can we do better next time
Program Kanban
Manages the flow of work for the program
Program events drive
the train.
Program events create a closed-loop system to keep the train on the tracks.
ART sync is used to
coordinate progress.
Programs coordinate dependencies through sync meetings.
ART sync includes
Scrum of scrums
PO Sync
Scrum of scrums
- Visibility into progress and impediments
* Faciltiated by RTE
