Product owners - how to get your development team to love you (product school, 8.16)

Product Owners: How to get your development team to love you

@ProductSchool

/ProductmanagementNY

/Productschool

Product Owners: How to Get Your

Development Team to Love YouRon Lichty, principal, Ron Lichty Consultingauthor, Managing the Unmanageable

www.RonLichty.com www.ManagingTheUnmanageable.net 2

* Addison Wesley published October 2012

*

3

Ron Lichty, Managing Development & Product Teams

SOFTWEST

4

5

Transforming Chaos to Clarity

6

Untangling Knots in Development and Product Teams

Training Teams: Scrum and Agile

1-4 weeks

Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 7

…and training Managers, Product Managers & Execs

* Addison Wesley published October 2012 8

Rules of Thumb / Nuggets of Wisdom*

Brooks’s Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

– Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

* 300 in the book



* 300 in the bookRon Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 10

In the beginning, everyone will talk about scope, and budget, and schedule, but in the end, nobody really cares about any of those things.

The only thing they care about is this: People will love your software, or they won’t.

So that’s the only criterion to which you should truly manage.

—Joseph Kleinschmidt, CTO, now a CEO

* 300 in the bookRon Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 11


How to Get

Your Development Team

to Love You


What Motivates Programmers• Making a difference…

From Managing the Unmanageable:, by Mickey W. Mantle and Ron Lichty, based on Frederick Herzberg’s seminal work in the 1950s identifying and differentiating motivators and de-motivators. 13

Share the Big Picture


Share the Big Picture

• Connect the dots– The big picture– What each team member is contributing


Partner


17

Partner

ScrumTeam.jpg (from Exploring Scrum- the Fundamentals, by Dan Rawsthorne & Doug Shimp)Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You

Prioritize


Prioritize

• Developers want to know they’re working on the stuff customers will value most!

• There is no such thing as “2 top priorities”!• Get good at the mantra, “I’ll put it in the backlog”


Prioritize

• Developers want to know they’re working on the stuff customers will value most!

• There is no such thing as “2 top priorities”!• Get good at the mantra, “I’ll put it in the backlog”

• “If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.”— Sheila Brady, Apple project management

guru


Prioritize

21Ron Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You

Prioritize

• “If you don’t have time to calculate value, we don’t have time to calculate cost.” --Jim Highsmith, agile coach and guru


Prioritize

• Be the source of clarity!


Share the “What” not the “How”



• It’s subtle



As a <some kind of user>I want to <do something>in order to <accomplish some goal>

WhoWhatWhy

Never “How”


Block the Noise


Block the Noise

--John Evans photo

Be a damper to the noise. --Joe Kleinschmidt, CTORon Lichty: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You 28

Make Trade-Offs

• Scope and Schedule


Make Trade-Offs

• Honor velocity• Focus on fomenting amazing teamwork

– on supporting the team becoming high performance


Be Available


Be Available

• Be there with clarity– with the priorities / with the backlog– with the stories– with the acceptance tests– with the detail– with the clarity / the disambiguation


Let Developers Focus



• Avoid interruptions



• Avoid interruptions• Prevent mid-sprint tangents



• Avoid interruptions• Prevent mid-sprint tangents• Multitasking?


Have the Data


Have the Data

• You need to know about this classic book: Software by Numbers Mark Denne & Jane Cleland-Huang


Have the Data

• You need to know about this classic book: Software by Numbers Mark Denne & Jane Cleland-Huang

– the source of• Minimum Marketable Features (MMFs)• Incremental Funding Methodology (IFM)


Engage Users


Engage Users

• Open a connection to users for developers


Engage Users

• Open a connection to users for developers• Remember: It’s about delighting users!


Listen


Listen

• Support a culture of communication– at every level– with everyone

• up, down, within and across

• “We have two ears and one mouth. Use them in this ratio.”— Kimberly Wiefling


Incorporate Engineering’s Stories



• opportunities in the code• technical risk• reducing technical debt• refactoring• automation



• Webinar w Greg Cohen:http://www.slideshare.net/RonLichty/prioritizing-the-product-backlog-aipmm-webinar



• Webinar w Greg Cohen:http://www.slideshare.net/RonLichty/prioritizing-the-product-backlog-aipmm-webinar

If you’re just using your engineers to code, you’re losing half their value.

--Marty Cagan


Be Tech Savvy


Theme Your Sprints


Support Agile Values

Annual Study of Product Team Performance


http://www.ronlichty.com/study.html

Support Agile Values

Methodology You Use

Methodology You Associate with Increase Profits

Agile Blended (Some Waterfall and Some Agile) Lean Waterfall

Agile 73.9% 13.0% 9.8% 0.0%

Blended (Some Waterfall and Some Agile) 31.8% 46.2% 10.6% 6.1%

Lean 14.3% 0.0% 42.9% 14.3%

Waterfall 15.8% 50.0% 18.4% 13.2%

Don't Know 5.3% 42.1% 26.3% 5.3%


It’s the Values

• Support Agile Values

The Agile Manifesto– We value:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools• Working software over comprehensive documentation• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation• Responding to change over following a plan

-- http://agilemanifesto.org/


http://agilemanifesto.org/

Agile Values Inspire Great Teams


It’s the Values

• That self-organizing team thing

By Michaelblinkpipe (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAn_Abcam_stand_up_meeting_using_BlinkPipe_video_conferencing..png

Agile Values Inspire Great Teams

• Build projects around motivated individuals

• Trust… to get the job done • Face-to-face conversation • Self-organizing teams• The team reflects, …tunes, …adjusts -- http://agilemanifesto.org/


http://agilemanifesto.org/

Support Agile Values• Create an Agile Culture

Projects Not Suitable for Agile?



• Micromanagement



• Micromanagement disrupts Agile• Micromanagement prevents Best Teams• Micromanagement prevents Learning• Micromanaged teams become order-takers



• Micromanagement disrupts Agile• Micromanagement prevents Best Teams• Micromanagement prevents Learning• Micromanaged teams become order-takers

• Agile calls for everyone on the team to step up• Micromanagement causes everyone to step back


Partner


Photo by Esti Alvarez, Some rights reserved, http://www.Flickr.com/photos/esti/4638056301/

Ron Lichty Consulting • Interim & acting CTO/VP Eng roles / making development

hum– http://ronlichty.com, [email protected]

• The book: Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools & Insights for Managing Software People & Teams– http://ManagingTheUnmanageable.net

• The study: The Study of Product Team Performance – http://www.ronlichty.com/study.html

• Training: Agile for TeamsThe Agile ManagerManaging Software People and Teams

64

Ron Lichty Consulting • Interim & acting CTO/VP Eng roles / making development

hum– http://ronlichty.com, [email protected]

• The book: Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools & Insights for Managing Software People & Teams– http://ManagingTheUnmanageable.net

• The study: The Study of Product Team Performance – http://www.ronlichty.com/study.html

• Training: Agile for TeamsThe Agile ManagerManaging Software People and Teams

65

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Product owners - how to get your development team to love you (product school, 8.16)

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