requirements elicitation—the social media way

BW10 Concurrent Session 11/13/2013 3:45 PM

"Requirements Elicitation—the Social Media Way"

Presented by:

Stefano Rizzo Polarion Software

Brought to you by:

340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073 888‐268‐8770 ∙ 904‐278‐0524 ∙ [email protected] ∙ www.sqe.com

Stefano Rizzo Polarion Software

In a career spanning some twenty years, Stefano Rizzo has been a methodology consultant, a pre-sales engineer, an IT researcher, a university professor, VP of R&D for a large consortium, Regional Sales Director for a software company, and CEO of two software development organizations. With his broad experience in the Application Lifecycle Management arena, he has been leading Product Management for Polarion Software’s product lines from its first release in 2005 until 2010. In his current SVP Strategy & Business Development role, in addition to defining corporate vision, he leads several research projects in the ALM and PLM fields.

07/09/13

1

Polarion Software®

Requirements Elicitation The Social Media Way

Stefano Rizzo SVP Strategy and Business Development

Boston, November 13th, 2013

•  Our Company

07/09/13

2

Polarion Software® www.polarion.com

Overview History

3

2 5 Privately held company founded in 2004, First product release 2005


Polarion In one pill

07/09/13

3


Overview Polarion in Numbers

5

150+ 250+ 10,000+ extensions Fortune 1000 deployments Registered community members

1,000,000 + users


Overview Global Presence

6

07/09/13

4


Overview Ovum ALM Decision Matrix


Achievements

8

Polarion Customers

07/09/13

5

•  Scrum @ Polarion Software


–  Shorten time to release •  …and ensure releases

–  Transparency to management/customers •  …and release what’s expected

–  Faster reaction •  to market needs •  to users’ feedback •  to the change

–  Simplify synchronization of distributed teams –  Easier releasing to the market

•  Lower effort to stabilization, less things to test –  Flexibility in prioritization, risk reduction

Why Scrum? The promise

07/09/13

6


–  Has proven its benefits in small projects •  Our main project is a huge one, lasting since 2004

–  Frightens the board •  Do we control costs and releases?

–  Gives power to the development team •  Does it ensure traceability and accountability?

–  Needs the customer to be part of the team •  Where will we sit 1.000.000 users?

But Scrum… Known Issues

Key issue we

address today

•  So, Scrum…

07/09/13

7


We moved to Scrum from a traditional Development process 6 years ago

Scrum in Polarion Software When?

!


•  Polarion’s Iterative development has short iterations •  2 weeks, with meetings at the beginning and at the end of

each iteration (called sprint in Scrum)

Scrum in Polarion Software How?

07/09/13

8


Scrum in Polarion Software We eat our own bread


Scrum in Polarion Software Backlogs

•  Product Backlog items •  User Stories, described in a way that at least the idea behind

each one is clear. –  “The user must be able to reset the status of an item to the

original one” (pretty good user story) –  “Improve the performance of the product” (bad user story)

•  Business value for Backlog items •  Each User Story must be valuable for the user •  A good prioritization is critical to ensure the success of the

project –  Especially when you have two thousand candidates and the

ability to implement 10-12 in a iteration

07/09/13

9


Scrum in Polarion Software Our backlogs

Every Backlog has an owner Backlog owners “play the user” into Sprint meetings


Scrum in Polarion Software Backlogs

07/09/13

10


Scrum in Polarion Software Project progress


Scrum in Polarion Software Release burndown

07/09/13

11

•  Requirements?


•  The most difficult and critical job is to produce a good backlog of User Stories. –  Altogether they cover the full product

•  very hard to ensure –  They are flat and independent on each other!

•  Team work on the stories one after another

–  They must be small •  so you need to break “big” features into smaller sub stories –

thinking about user scenario for every small piece

Requirements and Scrum User stories

07/09/13

12


•  So, provided that we cannot invite all our users to our meetings, we have Product Managers “playing the customer”

•  PMs derive User Stories from: –  User Demand Management process

•  Mainly fed by Professional Services and Sales

–  Strategy meetings •  Lot of ideas, often far from the ground…

–  Internal and customer surveys •  “Why that button is not blue?”

Requirements elicitation Road to user stories


•  Frequent and tangible results –  Short iterations with visible improvements

•  Easy control over development activities –  But this needs discipline and tools

•  Transparent project progress –  But this needs a good backlog (i.e. good User Stories)

Scrum is good in… Benefits

07/09/13

13


•  In order to run Scrum effectively you must consider to: –  Keep iterations as short as possible (2 weeks max) –  Invest in product management/requirement spec.

•  Definition of user stories is the critical bottleneck •  Innovation happens outside the development team

–  Keep high motivation in the development team •  In “traditional” development, developers are requested to

invent a lot – with the shortfall that results could be different from what expected

•  With Scrum developers are told what to do precisely, so they could be frustrated

Scrum needs… Implications


•  If you gather requirements for a SCRUM team you must consider that: –  You are part of the Development Team, with them you

share success and blame •  User stories are discussed every day, not just at the

beginning of the development •  You must continuously try to find answers, examples,

clarifications for developers

–  Your requirements must be decomposed into good user stories

•  Finding out a requirement is still the key, but taking it to its real essence is not an easy task

Requirements and Scrum Your job

07/09/13

14

•  The Social way


•  A million users but just few contacts –  Pretty typical in B2B

Before the Social way What were we lacking?

07/09/13

15


•  Complains

•  Issues

•  Strong requests

Before the Social way You get just…


•  Appreciation

•  Small issues – like usability difficulties

•  Users’ “mood”

Before the Social way You miss (quite) completely

07/09/13

16


Let’s try Social Which Social?


•  Place vs. Channel –  It was clear from the very beginning: it’s not a new

communication channel –  It’s a beer with friends

Let’s try Social A Social place

07/09/13

17


•  Start with user conference –  Meeting each other helps engagement a lot

•  Create a community –  With the social media that better fits your users

•  Enlarge the community –  Drill down companies with contests, “tell a friend”,

gadgets… –  Put every employee you have in the community

•  Nurture the community –  Post some useful content, every day at least!!!

Our experience How to start?


•  Social is reputation –  Can be good, can be bad

Our experience Reputation

07/09/13

18


•  Reputation is an investment –  For technology makers reputation was coming from

the product –  Now is the product + your employees talking with their

customers •  They will probably do it, anyhow

–  Better to give them time to do it and teach them how to do it

–  Nurture the community, every day if not every minute

Our experience Reputation


Our experience Which outcome?

•  A lot of material… –  Unstructured –  From generic to too specific

•  A lot of ideas… –  Fuel for usability improvements –  Clear understanding of most used and unused

features

07/09/13

19


•  Can be too small…

Outcome How much data?


•  In case of small feedback, answer to these questions: –  Are we using the right medium? –  Did we set the stage in the right way? –  Are we using the right language? –  Do we properly nurture the community?

Small data Why?

07/09/13

20


•  Can be too big…

Outcome Big Data


•  In case of too much data you need to invest into Big Data analysis. You will get: –  Product improvements –  Inspiration for your product strategy –  Inspiration for your marketing strategy

•  You will not get –  Innovation: “only” a fertile soil for innovative minds

Big Data How?

07/09/13

21

•  The Polarion way


•  Selecting the right platform is critical –  You should always use the platform of your users, not

force them to use something else… –  What do our customer and the customer of our

customers use???

Issues Popular media not always working

07/09/13

22


•  Our typical users –  System Engineers –  Software Engineers –  Business Analysts –  Requirements Engineers and QA people

•  They normally don’t use popular social media to discuss about their job-related stuff –  They use Polarion!!! –  So we made our product more Social

Social Polarion Social features in our product


Social Polarion Engage and collaborate

07/09/13

23


Social Polarion Approve and comment


Social Polarion Mobile

07/09/13

24

•  Conclusions


•  Engage your users!

–  involvement of more stakeholders –  better company reputation –  ability to harvest unusual requirements and

unsolicited feedback

Lessons learned Results

07/09/13

25


•  Improved release strategy

•  Improved product easiness of use

Lessons learned Benefits for us (you)

•  Questions?

[email protected]

tw: steriz

requirements elicitation—the social media way

Technology