Product over project

Product Over Project

Three TWers and Customers

Inception

Prototypes

Master Story List

Estimates

Release Plan

First release in 10 months

After two months

Velocity is low

Team working harder

..and is accumulating debt

Customer is nervous

Another month goes by

Finger pointing

Developers: A lot of this was not part of original scope

Customer: That is because of bad analysis

Analysts: Only if we were building stuff fast enough

Release in 20 months at current velocity

Estimation, Replanning and Contract Negotiation

Customer: You guys should fix bid it

Development Team: Looks like we have screwed up big time. We should

work on weekends

TW: Guys lets make this happen

TW: We are giving discount

Almost five months!

Developer: Worried about quality of code

Can fill a whole newspaper with technical debt

QA: Worried about lack of automation

Analysts: Not keen talking to customer

TW: Do we have to give more discounts?

WHAT ARE WE DOING WRONG?

1

We are not good at this game?

Every product is different

Software development is discovery process

Delivery is the only test of estimation

Everything else is just opinion

2

Advice needs to be better than…Think out of box

Be focusedBe creative

Stay commited

“Trying harder is not an improvement strategy” – Jason Yip

3.

Planning (estimation) is important

Plans (estimates) are not

4. Most Important

This is the wrong game?

What are we building anyway?

Why is no one talking about that?

Tail is wagging the dog

Project is defining the product

Don’t trust me

Look at your project status report

Listen to people in standup

So, what’s the proposition?

1.Customer pays for software

10 Months is too long

Do Shorter releases

Find ways to do it. Don’t accept customer’s word for it.

Internal release if nothing works

Internal release should also meet all criteria

Customer Signed-off != Done

Focuses everyone on the next release

Its not how fast we are going

but… where we are going?

Effective over efficient-- Dan North

2.Build the right thing

At the right time

Again..software development is discovery process

Yes, even for the customers

Need onsite presence to define the product

Not only to……to get story signed-offfor backlog creation

for feature estimation

Send best people onsite……instead of keeping them to keep

velocity high

Creating a product which no one wants is worst kind of waste

Building things ahead of time is waste

Play the right game!