Automating Product Management in an Agile World Using Jira

P-CAMP: Automating Unconference for Product Managers Product Management in an Agile World using Jira Christina Noren, VP Product Management, Splunk

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. from Principles behind the Agile Manifesto © 2001 Kent Beck, Mike Beedle, Arie van Bennekum, Alistair Cockburn, Ward Cunningham, Martin Fowler , James Grenning, Jim Highsmith, Andrew Hunt, Ron Jeffries, Jon Kern, Brian Marick, Robert C. Martin, Steve Mellor, Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, Dave Thomas P-Camp 2008

Who are we to talk? • Splunk is the IT Search engine - Indexes logs, configurations, metrics and all other IT data in real-time - Search, alert, report and share knowledge for operations, security and compliance • >150,000 downloads & >550 Enterprise licenses sold in 2.5 years - 21st Century Insurance, Aetna, BEA, British Telecom, Catholic Healthcare West, Chevron, Cisco, Comcast, Dow Jones, LinkedIn, Motorola, NASA, Orbitz, Raytheon, Riverbed, Shopzilla, T-Mobile, Telstra, Thomson, Verisign, Verizon, Visa, and Vodafone all use Splunk • Splunk powers a growing list of hardware & software offerings - Ironport, Netcordia, Penguin Computing, Proofpoint, Radware, St. Bernard Software, Strongmail, TriGeo, Uptime Software and Voltage Security are all Powered by Splunk • Poised for growth • P-Camp 2008

Open approach changes everything • Free download • High touch - support@splunk.com alias open to everyone - IRC with real developers (and ascii art) • Open architecture & APIs • SplunkBase community application sharing • Public documentation • Public roadmap • Blogs and developer videos, even about new R&D P-Camp 2008

Agile at Splunk • Development-driven - Splunk’ s dev team wanted to move faster and be more scalable • Embraced by the business - Obviously the way to stay ahead of the competition • Loosely SCRUM - 5-7 scrum teams at any time - 2-4 week sprints, some sprints are design or QA focused - Burndown list at start of each sprint • Preview releases for continuous customer delivery P-Camp 2008

Agile PM worries • No roadmap - We’d be open, yet not coherent to customers and the field • No market, competitive inputs - Decisionmaking bias toward the loudest customers • De facto positioning of new features - With constant change, the old approach of positioning first wouldn’t work • PMs wouldn’t be able to be there for key decisions - Everyday decisions, yet PMs need to be in the field - Sheer number of separate teams relative to PM headcount P-Camp 2008

A practical solution: extending Jira for PM • Already in place for engineering requirements & bugs - Not a black box PM tool • Highly extensible - Custom workflows, reports, issue types, link types, accelerators, automation • No more static documents to get out of date • Engaged New Aspects of Software • Not cheaper than buying off-the-shelf - More digestible, easier to integrate P-Camp 2008

Issue type model JIRA backlog Cases Bugs support@splunk.com inputs P4 Enhancement Requirements Cases Requests Problem Call Reports Features Statements customer meetings and calls roadmap Market Datapoints market & competitive analysis P-Camp 2008

Custom workflows • Enhancement requests: - New ERs come from CRM system - PMs scope them by linking to PSs, reject or invalidate them • Market datapoints and call reports: - New MDs and CRs entered by PMs, sometimes engineering - PMs scope them by linking to PSs • Problem statements: - PMs enter them, start scoping them, finish scoping them, define requirements for them • Features: - PMs enter them, define them by linking to PSs and requirements - Features can be canceled P-Camp 2008

Automation (still in progress) • Cascaded close - Requirement closure triggers close-deliver of linked PSs, features - PS closure triggers close-deliver of linked ERs • Notifications - Email back to support on ER close P-Camp 2008

Link types • Most klugey part of the implementation • No way to limit what issue types can link to what other issue types P-Camp 2008

Accelerators • Example: Deliver ER - Closes with resolution of Delivered • Complex accelerators still in progress - “Create and link problem statement” ‣ Clones the current ER as a PS, sets ER status to scoped, leaves PS open for editing, links ER to new PS P-Camp 2008

Custom “PRD“ report • Problem statements and all linked inputs, requirements and features - Filterable by text search, PS weight, timeframe, component (scrum), other criteria • Internal working report of market needs - Used in product steering meetings to determine priorities for scrum assignments and goals - Used in sprint planning meetings to define burndown lists - Always up-to-date with the latest list of customers having each problem! P-Camp 2008

Custom roadmap report • Features and all linked problem statements and requirements - Organized by planned release / target timeframe - Filterable by public/private, priority, planned release, timeframe, status, other criteria • XML format gets converted to Splunk’s public roadmap P-Camp 2008

Roadmap P-Camp 2008

PRD P-Camp 2008

PRD (cont) P-Camp 2008

Enhancement Request P-Camp 2008

Problem Statement P-Camp 2008

Problem Statement (cont) P-Camp 2008

Feature P-Camp 2008

Future goals • Tighter CRM integration, especially opportunity value • Continuously updated planned release for every ER based on requirements • More automation of problem priorities • Support portal self-service visibility through to requirements status • Drilldown from public roadmap • Automated creation of product marketing requirements P-Camp 2008

How can you do it? • We’re open sourcing our work - ETA 1-2 months - Delivery as empty project + plugin JARs • Engage New Aspects of Software - dpickering@newaspects.com - Jira and Confluence experts - They did the work for us and are in the best position to tweak it for you P-Camp 2008

Automating Product Management in an Agile World Using Jira

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