Love

The secret ingredient

to developing great products.

By: Isaac Barnes Co-founder, Eminent IT

isaac@eminent-it.com

@IsaacMBarnes

Have you
ever
fallen in love?

All you need is love

Are you ready to fall in

love?

Who else will

love
your product?

Start with what they

hate?

Create only after youve

spent

time listening.

What will they

love?

Who else

loves it?

Build a family.

If you hire people just

because they can do a
job, theyll work for your
money. But if you hire
people who believe what
you believe, theyll work
for you with blood and
sweat and tears.
Simon
Sinek

Will they stay in

love?

Q&A

Some Thoughts on
Developing Products
CJ Vizas
Founder Institute Mentoring

What is a product?
A
A
A
A

device
system
piece of software
software platform

Whatever its labeled, a product is something that

the company can produce to a consistent
specification, in some reasonable volume, and that
a reasonable number of customers are likely to buy

The development path

IDEA

Technolo
gy

Prototy
pe

Produc
t

An iterative process:
An idea is not a product
Technology is not a product
A prototype is not a product
The initial product is the beginning, not the
end .remember, you cant please everyone

Process elements and team

elements
Experience creating a product
Working relationships with customers
Users
Buyers

Capable technical team

Youre
surfing not
sailing

Thank you!

PRODUCT SAVVY CONSULTING, LLC

Jonathan Chashper, CEO
@productsavvy

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

31

The Big Divide

Business and Technology teams are disconnected
Business team is often close to the customer
Technology teams have little / no visibility to
markets
Business / Techies dont speak the same
language
Business / Techies dont trust each other
7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

32

What is Scrum?
Scrum is an agile process that allows us to focus on

delivering the highest business value in the shortest time.

It allows us to rapidly and repeatedly inspect actual
working software (every two weeks to one month).
The business sets the priorities. Teams self-organize to
determine the best way to deliver the highest priority
features.
Every two weeks to a month anyone can see real working
software and decide to release it as is or continue to
enhance it for another sprint.
7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

33

The Scrum Process

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

34

Sprints
Scrum projects make progress in a series of sprints
Analogous to Extreme Programming iterations

Typical duration is a calendar month (at most)

A constant duration leads to a better rhythm
Product is designed, coded, and tested during the
sprint
Sprints cannot change, while executed

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

35

Product owner
Define the features of the product
Decide on release date and content
Prioritize features according to market value
Adjust features and priority every iteration, as needed
Accept or reject work results

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

36

The ScrumMaster
Represents management to the project
Responsible for enacting Scrum values and practices
Removes impediments
Ensure that the team is fully functional and productive
Enable close cooperation across all roles and
functions
Shield the team from external interferences

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

37

The Team
Typically 5-9 people
Cross-functional:
Programmers, testers, user experience designers, etc.
Members

should be full-time

May be exceptions (e.g., database administrator)

Teams are self-organizing

Ideally, no titles but rarely a possibility

Membership should change only between sprints

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

38

Product Backlog

This
This is
is the
the product
product
backlog
backlog
7/2/16

The requirements
A list of all desired work on
the project
Ideally expressed such that
each item has value to the
users or customers of the
product
Prioritized by the product
owner
Reprioritized at the start of
each sprint

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

39

Team
Team
capacity
capacity
Product
Product
backlog
backlog
Business
Business
conditions
conditions

Sprint planning meeting

Sprint prioritization

Analyze and evaluate product

Sprint
Sprint
goal
goal

backlog
Select sprint goal

Sprint planning

Decide how to achieve sprint goal

Current
Current
product
product

(design)
Create sprint backlog (tasks) from
product backlog items (user
stories / features)
Estimate sprint backlog in hours

Sprint
Sprint
backlog
backlog

Technology
Technology
7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

40

Sprint Planning
Team selects items from the product backlog they can
commit to completing
Sprint backlog is created
Tasks are identified and each is estimated (1-16 hours)
Collaboratively, not done alone by the ScrumMaster

High-level design is considered

As
Asaavacation
vacationplanne
plannerr,,
IIwant
wantto
tosee
seephotos
photos
of
the
hotels.
of the hotels.

7/2/16

Code the middle tier (8 hours)

Code the user interface (4)
Write test fixtures (4)
Code the foo class (6)
Update performance tests (4)

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

41

The Daily Scrum

Everyone answers 3
questions:

Parameters
Daily

What did you do yesterday?

15-minutes

What will you do today?

Stand-up

Not for problem solving

Is there anything in your

way?

Whole world is invited

Only team members, ScrumMaster,
product owner, can talk

Helps avoid other unnecessary

meetings

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

42

The Sprint Review

Team presents what it accomplished during the sprint
Typically takes the form of a demo of new features or
underlying architecture
Informal
2-hour prep time rule
No slides

Whole team participates

Invite the world

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

43

How do we do it?
Build Trust with our Customer
Build Trust and use Same Language as developers
Represent the Market to the Developer, be a true Product
Owner
Understand (and show that) software development

Converse
Daily
As needed, no stupid questions
Encourage dialog

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

44

Set Up
Kick-Off Sprint is key
Business Side

Meet the developers

Introduce the big picture
Review requirements with entire team
Technology Side

Setup Dev End

Setup management system (VersionOne)
Setup communication channels (Skype, Email, Phone)
Start design work

Have a successful deliverable

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

45

Execution High Level

Facilitate the First Sprint
Basic user stories discovered and discussed
System architecture was put together
Initial development started under the supervision of the Product
Owner

Keep short sprints (2 weeks) get a high tempo going

Get the teams buy-in on the process

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

46

Execution High Level (cont.)

Agree on how to work together
Setup Scrum Management Software (VersionOne, Jira,
PivotalTracker)
Setup Code Repository (Assembla, GIT, BitBucket)
Setup Dev / Testing / Production environments (Amazon Cloud,
Azure, Google)
Setup Coding Guidelines / Standards
Screen Share (join.me, Skype, Zoom)

Code basic capabilities and some user stories

Have a delivery

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

47

Be There Really, Really Be There

Scrum Masters
On prem, with real authority to help the team
Daily summary, in writing to team members
Use Burn Down Charts

Product Owners:
Be involved with the team
Know the team capabilities
Use your Architect
The Architect can answer questions when you are not
available
Bug Reviews (retrospectives)
7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

48

Requirements
Product Owners
Create high level (Marketing) requirements and evolve them into
Product Backlog
Review stories with all members
Create requirements out of user stories
Work with team to assign and estimate
VersionOne our tool of choice to keep track of who is working on what
and how the sprint is progressing

Scrum Masters
Make sure everyone has a cam and earphones
Be diligent about tracking progress
Define Done, Really Done and Really Really Done

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

49

Testing
Empower QA People
QA Should report to Scrum Master / Product Owner
Tests created ahead of Sprint
QA moves faster than dev

QA is done during the Sprint, not after

Sanity testing defined and performed, often
Unit testing performed by devs, before QA

Staging / Testing Environment was created, separated

from Dev and of course, Production

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

50

Deployment
Have 3 different environments (2 are enough,
sometimes)
Dev
Test
Production

Use scripts for deploying and for builds (jenkins, docker)

Cloud is great for cost effective, rapidly established
environments
We use the Amazon Cloud

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

51

Day to Day Life

Daily Scrum

Adjust meeting time so all can participate (time zones)

Summarize the meeting (the 3 Questions) and distribute by
email
Video conference between sites

Release/Sprint planning
Share planning charts
All team members

Release/Sprint Review

One session for all teams

All team members

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

52

Lessons Learned
Scrum is well-suited for Fast, Lean dev environments
Having a product owner with both detailed knowledge of
the requirements as well as the mandate to set priorities
is crucial
When planning the project time and budget, it's
important to make sure that a good portion of the
product backlog is available and estimated (70 80% if
possible)
Testing is vital the return on investment will outweigh
the cost
7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

53

The mother of all Tips

Release imperfect products
Release quickly, Learn fast, Release
again.
Perfect products do not exist
7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

54

PRODUCT SAVVY CONSULTING, LLC

Thank You for Listening
Jonathan Chashper
jchashper@productsavvy.com

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

55

Copyright notice
This presentation was based on the work done by
Mike Cohn (mike@mountaingoatsoftware.com)
And obtained from: www.mountaingoatsoftware.com

7/2/16

2006 2016 Product Savvy Consulting, LLC

Proprietary and Confidential

56