Lean entrepreneurship Agile Product Developmnet

Agile Product Development

Sean Ammirati

November 26, 2012

#CMULean © Sean Ammirati, 2012

Customer Development

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Agile Product Development

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The Lean Startup

Today’s Focus




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOkvE9g48bM



Release Early & Often

(example beyond software)


Goals for Innovation Happens • Provide networking event connecting

entrepreneurs & large corporations

• Encourage entrepreneurs to focus more on getting customers

• Create a culture of “buying local” in Pittsburgh



7 Events

22 Months

Iterated After Each Event



Corporate Attendees


• You’re wrong more then you are right

• Key Metric: How fast can you iterate?

• Need to Predict Delivery Times

Why Agile Development?


Scrum

Engineering Practices

This will be unique for each of you based on your team, type of solution

being developed and personalpreferences.

Could be: XP, Feature Driven Development, Crystal, Kanban or any other process your engineering team

is comfortable with.

(often pull aspects from each)


• Firsthand observed it transform & improve my last software company - mSpoke

• Being used at some of the largest technology companies in the world today (Google, Yahoo!, Adobe, etc ...)

• Provides a great framework for entire team to understand what is going on.

• Disclaimer: Still hard to build technology and not a silver bullet

Why we focus on Scrum?


Key Themes from Scrum


Scrum Process

Source: http://www.krishnabitla.com/post/2011/02/02/scrum-‐process-‐sprint-‐agile-‐software-‐methodology.aspx


http://www.krishnabitla.com/post/2011/02/02/scrum-process-sprint-agile-software-methodology.aspx

http://www.krishnabitla.com/post/2011/02/02/scrum-process-sprint-agile-software-methodology.aspx

Product Backlog

• Prioritized list or queue of requirements

• Rough Estimates of level of effort to complete (not all estimates need to be equally thorough / higher priority can be more thorough)

• Ultimately Product Owner sets the priority

• Any one (customer, employee, board member, advisor) can add to product backlog

• Should be shared with the full-team




Tools / Tips for Product Backlog

• Everyone on team should easily be able to see the backlog

• I’ve found one “administrator” helpful logistically

• If not using a full scrum tool, you can do this easily in a shared spreadsheet (eg Google Docs)


Time Box / Sprint

• Each sprint:

• Lasts a defined number of days (time box)

• Has a specific set of requirements from backlog allocated to it (defined during “sprint planning meeting”)

• Has specific goals for the team to achieve (set up front) - “sprint goal”


Release Sprints

• In my experience, release sprints have been quite helpful.

• However, continuous deployment is becoming popular in some circles (Eric Ries http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/continuous-deployment-5-eas.html)

• If you do continuous deployment, Scrum still integrates fine to manage process (http://knowscrum.com/benefits-of-continuous-integration-in-scrum-best-practices-in-scrum/)


http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/continuous-deployment-5-eas.html

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/continuous-deployment-5-eas.html

http://knowscrum.com/benefits-of-continuous-integration-in-scrum-best-practices-in-scrum/




Tasks for a Sprint Backlog

• Based on the sprint goal - a list of tasks are created

• Task estimates should be roughly 4 - 16 hours of work

• Sometimes only a partial sprint backlog can be created (ie: if one task is define an internal architecture) - in this case leave reminders and estimate as soon as possible


Estimates

• All estimates are forward looking

• How much will it take to complete this feature / requirement?

• Increasing an estimate based on learned complexity is accepted by the team

• Sprint backlog estimates should be updated regularly


Velocity / Burn Down

• The average decrease in estimates for the total effort / time remaining is a sprint’s velocity

• Overtime velocity becomes very helpful for planning purposes

• The chart showing daily total of time remaining is called a burn down chart or sprint’s signature





Daily Scrum• Each Day Team Meets to have each team member

report:

• What have you done since the last daily scrum?

• What will you work on between now and the next daily scrum?

• What got in your way of doing work?

• Many very startups find “daily” to be overkill because of the small nature of the team- but regular communication still key


Sprint Review

• At the end of the sprint, the team demonstrates what they have built

• Compares against the sprint’s goals

• Retrospective to look for improvements at the end of the sprint


Exercise 2

This deliverable should explain (in whatever layout

you find most clear & concise) two things

• A specification for your Minimally Awesome

Product (or MVP) based on Exercise 1

• A product backlog of the work required to

build your M.A.P.


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