Using Atlassian Tools

Itamar GoldminzSr. Manager, Product Management Operations

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Managing an Impure SaaS Model

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What we’re trying to solveSales EngineeringPM

Client Input

Product Vision

Capacity

I will be talking about all of these:

• JIRA:

• Green Hopper• Custom Fields• RSS Feed (and some Ruby development)• Transitions and Transition screens

• Confluence

• Smart page design• Run Macro• JIRA Issues Macro

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Agenda

Meet OPOWER

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• 50+ Utility Clients, 10M + Households on Platform

Agile software development delivered through a Software-as-a-Service business

model

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(Some) benefits of SaaS• No need for duplication

• Leverage insights from one client to the rest

• Create a positive “network effect”

• Always deploy trunk

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Meet our ecosystem

• Waterfall-ish clients

• $M deals

• Sale Cycle ~ 8 Months, contracts span multiple years

• Fixed time, fixed scope RFPsMore disciplined LT planning process

The Roadmap is not just a “plan of intent”

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Challenges

WYSIWYP

Strategy-driven product development

External Roadmap?!

Pure agile development: maximum flexibility = maximum value

#atlassiansummit#atlassiansummit

Agile development / SaaS model pose unique challenges in some business environments and require creative mitigation techniques

#summit11

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Do nothing

Sales EngineeringPM

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“It’s not us, it’s them”

• Shape the market – regulation & policy

• Sell clients on our vision of the product

• Be an agile evangelist

• All great. But not enough

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“It’s not them, it’s us”

• Carefully balance strategy-driven and opportunity-driven product development

• Deep product empowerment of account specific experts (sales, engagement managers)

#atlassiansummit#atlassiansummit

Friction between your business/development model and your market is your problem (not your clients’). Be proactive. Adapt.

#summit11

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Easily communicable requirement model

• Common language is a pre-requisite for everything else

• Handle requirements of different scale

• Need to address varying levels of uncertainty

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Investment themes

• Not a requirement

• Not estimated

• Ensures alignment

• JIRA custom field

Market

Expansion15%

85%

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Initiatives

• Project-like

• Product-led decomposition

• Goes on Roadmap

• Estimate using DTIs (JIRA custom field)

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Features

• Avoid “Epic” Anti patterns

• Functional collection of user stories

• Joint (PM/Dev) decomposition

• Goes on wave (release) plan

• Leads estimate using story point ranges

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User stories

• Nothing new here

• Decomposed by leads

• Goes on iteration plan

• Teams estimate using story points

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Easily communicable requirement model

Type Estimation Currency

Size

Investment Theme

%pct of roadmap N/A Ensures RM-strategy alignment

Initiative DTI 2-8 Equivalent of a “project” in a continuous development framework

Feature SP Range 0-3 DTIS

Functional collection of user stories

User Story

SP <1/4 DTI

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Case study: rate analysis tool

Initiative

FeatureUser Story

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3

4

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Balancing strategy and opportunity

Strategy25%

Opportunity75%

2010

Strategy85%

Op-por-tu-nity15%

2011

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The token system

• Minimizes disruption to the strategic road map but still enables us to win deals

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Committing & tracking

Token System

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•Commitment?•Status•Token Budget•DTI•Due date

“Run” + “JIRA Issues”

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Tokens case study

• Multi $M RFP

• Saying “yes” to everything: 25 DTIs, ~15% of development capacity for 18 months

• Using the “token system” resulted in:

• Productive discussions and creative solutions to trim scope

• Tough compromises on both sides• Scope of work reduced to <10 DTIs

#atlassiansummit#atlassiansummit

Consider using a “Token System” to balance strategy and opportunity driven product development

#summit11

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Live roadmap: JIRA+Ruby+mongoDB

Live Roadmap: Jira+Ruby+mongoDBFiltering

Metadata

Details

Release

Title

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Not your typical release notes

• What got done in the last iteration?

• Planning vs. delivery

• What will get done in the next iteration?

• What’s in the pipeline?

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Different people are looking for different things

• Changes to the product that affect sales

• Set expectations with existing clients

• Configuring the product to enable new features

• General stuff we’re working on

Code Name

Key features

Tech impl

Demo Day vids

Screenshots

One line. Just the

important stuff

Release dates Intentionall

y vague

#atlassiansummit#atlassiansummit

Product empowerment tools:•Interactive Roadmap•Kick-ass release notes

#summit11

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Pushing the envelope

• Agile Enterprise-level long-term capacity planning:

Old School New Skool

Dates Iterations

Individuals Teams

Man-hours DTIs

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Agenda

• Background – balancing client input, product vision and engineering capacity in a challenging environment

• Approach – balancing strategy and opportunity, empowerment

• Process – requirement model, token system

• Tools – live roadmap, awesome release notes