Product Management in Agile Environment

Michael Vax

Founder of OnMaaS Software – www.onmaas.comPresident of Agile Vancouver –

www.agilevancouver.ca

Product Camp Vancouver 2011

Topics for Today• How the role of PM is different in Agile Environment?• Do PMs have more or less control?• Can we use the same process for all types of products and

markets?• Are new features done faster / better or the same?• What is the role of product management in ensuring quality?• Is product manager involved in allocating resources for

technical tasks?• Speaking the same language - you need to define domain

model• Ready Ready to be Done Done• What I can tell customers about release dates?

Not all features are the same

Feature Characteristics

Minor • Done it many times• Can be assigned to almost anybody on the team• no room to misinterpret requirement

Small • Enhancement to existing feature• Minor UI changes consistent with previous implementations• No technical challenges

Medium • Enhancement to existing feature• Crosscutting multiple modules

Large • Completely new feature or re-architecture of existing functionality with functional enhancements • Unclear domain questions – is bundle a product?• Requires selection of new technology or design patterns• New UI paradigm

Paths to code ready stories

Small Feature

Medium Feature

Large Feature

User Story

Epic Epic

User Story

Epic

User Story

User Story

User Story

User Story

User Story

User Story

User Story

User Story

ReadyReady for Review

Initial Definition

Legend User Story

Minor Feature

User Story

User Story

User Story

User Story

User Story

User Story

Agile Product Management• Collaborative decision process

– Wisdom of crowds– No decisions are made in isolation– Involving people from different parts of organization and customers

• Minimalistic approach– Less is better– Don’s rush with polishing feature that may not be needed– Value of the feature should justify every minute spend on its development and

maintenance• Focus on quality and ask: What does user really care about?• Expedient Solutions

– Better to get it out . .a good (rather than best) solution soon.– Be ready to release on a short notice

• Iterative– Make product better over time from feedback– Constant reprioritization based on feedback

Release Scope

Ready-Ready to be Done-Done

The Product Owner is asked, “Are you ready-ready?” and the team is

asked “Are you done-done?”.

“When teams concurrently make work ready for next iterations during development, we find quite often

they can cut the iteration length in half”

Estimation ready Epic• Domain questions are identified and

answered• UI approach is defined• Core technical decisions are made and

validated

Code ready story

• Can be estimated by team in no more that 15 minutes

• Is unlikely to be stopped or canceled due to unclear requirements or technical challenges

• Tests are defined• Domain Changes are understood, reviewed,

and consensus reached• UI mockups are reviewed by both end-users

and designers

Metric to measure Ready-Ready• Flow in implementation of a story: Is story

implemented without breaks in calendar time and context shift?

• Example:Assume a story is 3 points story. However, for various reasons it becomes 9 points story.The flow in this case is defined as 3/9 or 33%

Optimize the flow!

Lean Startup Conferencehttp://www.agilevancouver.ca/lean-startup-conference/

11

Sessions (May 5):

Owen Rogers and Steve Jones: Evolving Products Using Validated LearningRishi Dean: The New Rules of Early-Stage Product DevelopmentAsh Maurya: Instrumenting for Speed, Learning, and FocusBrant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits: It’s the end of the (startup) world as we know it.Rob Walling: Lessons Learned Moving From Developer to EntrepreneurPanel - Startup and Money

Tutorials (May 6):

Ash Maurya: Running Lean Workshop – Getting to Release 1.0Rob Walling: From Zero to Launch: A Step by Step BlueprintBrant Cooper: The Art of the Customer Development interview and other Customer Development Hacks.