1. IBM Marketing Services Center (MSC)
IBM Watson AI Dotcom
Agile
Transformation
Presented by Beverley Sutherland
June 2019
2. Agenda
2
What is Agile?
Why Agile?
Common Misconceptions
What Agile Is, Is Not
Agile, Scrum – What’s the Difference?
What’s a Sprint?
What’s a Self-Organizing Team?
Good Communication is Critical to Success
What are FROCC Values?
Where does the Scrum Team fit?
Roles & Responsibilities
Artifacts
Ceremonies
Appendix
– Priorities Matter
– Why Is Change So Hard?
– How are we using Jira?
– Jira Dashboard
– How to Create a Jira Ticket
4. Why Agile?
4
Less Busy Work,
More Innovation
Output measures quantity, velocity, release
cycle time.
Outcome is focused on impact and business
value, quality, whether a hypothesis was
validated, and whether an customer-delight
was achieved.
Outcome suggests that not everything is of equal value. As a matter
of fact, value becomes a byproduct of three key things:
• Revenue generation
• Cost savings
• Customer satisfaction
Because if we don’t take care of our customers someone else will.
6. What Agile Is, Is Not
Agile is…
Upheld by values
Guided by principles
People-centric
Value-driven
Collaborative
Self-organizing
Agile is not…
New
Fast
Without planning
Without documentation
An excuse for poor quality
Undisciplined
Unproven
A silver bullet
6
7. Agile, Scrum – What’s the Difference?
Scrum is one way to
implement agile.
Using an iterative approach in the
form of 1-4-week sprints that follows
a set of roles, responsibilities, and
meetings.
The 12 principles of Agile
1. Customer satisfaction is of highest priority
which is achieved through the continuous
delivery of valuable software.
2. Accommodate changing requirements even in
later phases of development.
3. Deliver working software frequently in a shorter
timescale.
4. Business team and developers must collaborate
on a daily basis throughout the project.
5. Higher autonomy is given to the team members
with greater support and trust.
6. Face-to-face interaction is critical for conveying
information within a development team.
7. The progress of the project is measured by
working software.
8. Promote sustainable development by
maintaining a constant pace indefinitely.
9. Technical excellence and good design should be
the main focus.
10. Simplicity is essential for progress.
11. Self-organizing teams are required for the best
architectures and designs.
12. The teams should reflect on how to become
more effective regularly and adopt the changes
to increase effectiveness.
Agile is a philosophy.
Scrum is a methodology.
7
8. What’s a Sprint?
8
Inputs from Customers,
Team, Managers, Executives
Prioritized list of what is
required: features, specs…
Sprint end date and team
deliverable do not change
Team selects starting at top
as much as it can commit to
deliver by end of sprint
Task Breakouts that are
clearly articulated and with
content ready to go.
Daily Standups meeting
Sprint Review
Finished work
What & Why
Retrospectives
Delivery
Critical to
continuous
improvement: KPI measurement
When
How
Scrum teams commit to ship working software through set intervals called sprints.
They use learning loops to quickly gather and integrate customer feedback.
9. What’s a Self-Organizing Team?
9
A group of motivated individuals who work
together toward a common (team) goal
Have the ability and authority to take decisions
and readily adapt to changing demands
11. What’s a Self-Organizing Team?
11
o Tasks always come from top-down
o Timeframe set
o Project manager responsible
o Project manager rules
o One-way communication
o Tasks defined by themselves
o Timeframe committed
o Team responsible
o Scrum Master facilitates
o Brainstorming from all team members
13. Good Communication is Critical to Success
13
Open, productive conversation is
critical to problem solving.
Documentation of our shared
understanding helps us align and
remain on track.
Choose simple, plain English, free
of jargon, for increased efficiency
and better alignment.
This is even more important when
teams have different ways of
communicating. How did this
team do?
https://youtu.be/uNGka2u1eiw
14. What are FROCC Values?
14
Focus
Everyone focuses on the work of the Sprint and
the goals of the Scrum Team.
Respect
Scrum Team members respect each other to
be capable, independent people.
Openness
The Scrum Team and its Stakeholders agree to
be open about all the work and the challenges.
People personally commit to achieving the
goals of the Scrum Team.
Commitment
Courage
Scrum Team members have courage to do the
right thing and work on tough problems.
Also known as the “misspelled FROG”
16. Where does the Scrum Team fit?
16
Leadership
Michelle BB
Joe Marchesi
Betsy Schaefer
Demand Generation
Amanda Thurston
Lizzie Caplan
Ben Gardner
Dan Russo
Digital Strategy
Jonathan Zeller
Lydia Herrera
Diamond Team Leads
Laura Donaldson, Applied AI
Emma Powers, Growth
Jim Young, OpenScale
With Watson
Erin Gabrielson
Michelle Reid
Michele Cooper
Scrum Master
Vacant
Product Owner
Beverley Sutherland
Analytics
Jennifer Peterson
Product Marketing
Emily Winchurch
Lindsay Wershaw
Caitlin Leddy
Katelyn Rothney
Paid Media
Rachel Mahler
Social
Tania Rahman
Editorial
Jeremy Hodge
Tim Suzor
Tim Mucci
Design
Annmarie Avila
Alex Ku
Tamar BB
Vanesha Patel
Blog
Mary Reisert
Scrum Dev Team
Jina Yoon, Designer
Kristie Swift, Designer
Dave Hayward, Tech Mgr
Henrique Poloni, Developer
Weine Oliveira, Developer
Vacant, QA
Content Strategy
Brenna McCarthy
Christie Schneider
Alan Drummer
SEO
Phil Buckley
Drupal
Dennis Dolliver
Note: Subject to change and may not reflect
all recent or influx organization changes.
17. Roles & Responsibilities – Scrum Team
17
Close Collaboration
Product Owner
Vision
Product strategy
Prioritization
Stakeholder management
Scrum Master
Process
Coaching
Facilitation
Collaboration
Dev Team
UX
Design
Development
QA
A scrum team needs 3 specific roles: product owner,
scrum master, and the development team. And
because scrum teams are cross-functional, the
development team includes strategists, testers,
designers, UX specialists, and ops engineers in
addition to developers.
Agile processes distribute the traditional project
manager’s responsibilities:
o Task assignment and day-to-day project decisions
(Team)
o Responsibility for scope/schedule trade-offs
(Product Owner)
o Quality management
(Team, Product Owner, Scrum Master)
18. Roles & Responsibilities – Scrum Team
18
Scrum Master
Keeper of the process
Responsible for ensuring the team
has everything they need to
deliver value
o Facilitate meetings
o Coach the team
o Remove impediments
o Provide feedback
o Help write stories
Product Owner
Owns “what” & “why”
Represents the client and the
business in general for the product
on which they’re working
o User Stories
o Acceptance Criteria
o Product Vision
o Prioritization
o Stakeholders
Scrum Dev Team
Owns the “how”
A group of cross-functional team
members all focused on the
delivery of quality outcomes
o Performs the work
o Adapts to change
o Decomposes stories
o Size stories
o Shippable features
19. Roles & Responsibilities – Product Owner
19
o Create and maintain a product backlog in Jira and
ensure tasks are prioritized based on user needs and
business value
o Advise stakeholders to create clear requirements with
high business value, aligned to business goals
o Translate business requirements into clear,
actionable user stories for development team
o Communicate with internal clients regularly
to gather requirements and priorities
o Understand and communicate to the web scrum team
the problems to be solved and the desired outcomes
o Create and manage the backlog, ensuring user stories
are appropriately defined and prioritized
o Collaborate with the web scrum team on a daily basis,
clarifying details and answering questions about
direction and strategy
o Review work with internal clients and stakeholders,
keeping them apprised of status and gathering
feedback for the web scrum team
o Accept or reject all work completed by the agile team
Owns “what” & “why”
The Product Owner in the Marketing Services Center
(MSC) of IBM is responsible for delivering digital
properties that provide value to web visitors and support
the business strategy.
The Product Owner represents the needs of stakeholders
(internal clients) from the marketing team and is
responsible for working with the agile scrum team to
ensure a clear understanding of goals and priorities.
The Product Owner is empowered and expected to push
back on plans and requests that are not in line with the
business goals.
The Product Owner is a problem solver, helping to sort
out content issues, offering advice to campaign
managers, and partnering with others on the web scrum
team to work through the backlog of requirements.
20. Roles & Responsibilities – Scrum Development Team
20
o They are self-organizing. No one (not even the Scrum
Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product
Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable
functionality
o Development Teams are cross-functional, with all the
skills as a team necessary to create a product Increment
o Scrum recognizes no titles for Development Team
members, regardless of the work being performed by the
person
o Scrum recognizes no sub-teams in the Development
Team, regardless of domains that need to be addressed
like testing, architecture, operations or business analysis
o Individual Development Team members may have
specialized skills and areas of focus, but accountability
belongs to the Development Team as a whole
Owns the “how”
The development team are the people who do the work.
Strong scrum teams are self-organizing and approach
their projects with a clear ‘we’ attitude. All members of
the team help one another to ensure a successful sprint
completion.
Roles generally include UX specialists, designers, writers,
developers, QA engineers, etc.
21. Roles & Responsibilities – Scrum Master
21
Keeper of the process
The Scrum Master in the Marketing Services Center (MSC)
of IBM facilitates a cross-functional team using agile
methodology to create Web deliverables.
The Scrum Master may work with the team of designers,
developers, UX, content, SEO and optimization in regular
Scrum sprints or in Kanban to create, deliver and update
the IBM.com web platform.
The Scrum Master is involved with sprint planning, leads
daily scrum standups, provides technical guidance,
reassigns tasks as needed, leads retrospectives and
reports sprint progress to the stakeholders. He or she
helps the team reach consensus for what can be
achieved during a specific period of time and during daily
calls and empowers the team to complete the goals they
have set. He or she also helps the team stay focused,
removes obstacles impeding the team's progress, and
protects the team from outside distractions.
o Promote, support and help everyone understand
Scrum theory, practices, rules, and values focused on
outcomes over output
o Facilitate daily scrum calls, bi-weekly backlog
grooming sessions, bi-weekly sprint planning sessions,
bi-weekly sprint reviews, bi-weekly retrospective
meetings, as well as any other scrum events as needed
o Coordinate with the Product Owner for stakeholder
reviews of the deliverables along with key team
members
o Facilitate an atmosphere for collaboration,
experimentation and transparency
o Remove impediments to the Development Team’s
progress
o Maintain the delicate balance between sponsors’
needs and team members’ needs
o Adhere to a defined sprint schedule to ensure minimal
to zero scope creep
o Coaching the Development Team in self-organization
and cross-functionality to create high-value products
23. Scrum Artifacts
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Some artifacts can include:
o User Story – A tool to define type of user,
what they want and why
o Product Backlog – List of functional &
non-functional requirements
o Sprint Backlog – Prioritized list of
stories for a given sprint
o Impediment List – Anything that is
slowing down the team
24. Sprint Ceremonies
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Purpose Cadence Duration Desired Outcome
Daily Scrum How are we doing? Daily 15 minutes
Understanding of day’s priorities
and path to clear any roadblocks
Sprint Planning
What do we do and
How do we do it?
Bi-weekly 1-2 hours
Sprint Backlog based on team
review of priorities, requirements,
level of effort
Sprint Review How did we do? Bi-weekly 1-2 hours
Stakeholder and Team
understanding of current MVP
Retrospective
Inspect and adapt.
How can we do
better?
Bi-weekly 1 hour
Action items to address what went
well and what can be improved
25. Sprint Planning
25
FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY
Be mindful that any requirements not set in advance
could qualify as scope changes.
Allow the necessary time for the team to review the
ticket and gather additional details and clarification.
Well-formed and articulated project proposals that
are received by the Wednesday (bi-weekly) before
the start of each 2-week Sprint will be considered.
Tickets received after Wednesday will be
considered for the following sprint.
Tickets are reviewed by the team on Thursday to
determine level of effort, complexity, and feasibility.
26. Sprint Retrospectives
26
To follow our Retrospectives, go to https://ibm.ent.box.com/folder/64515766714
“I have not failed.
I’ve just found
10,000 ways that
won’t work.”
-- Thomas A. Edison
27. Sprint Retrospectives – Health Monitor
27
To follow our Retrospectives, go to https://ibm.ent.box.com/folder/64515766714
28. Here to Help
28
Please feel free to reach out
to Beverley Sutherland with
any questions.
31. Priorities Matter
31
Spend more time on the right things.
The most important tasks move the work
closer to long term goals. Prioritizing allows
you to identify the most important tasks at
any moment and give those tasks more of
your attention, energy, and time.
32. Why Is Change So Hard?
32
Transformation and continuous improvement are not possible without openness to change.
33. How are we using Jira?
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Workflow and management of the following
DOTCOM project types:
o Homepage (features, updates)
o Content updates (copy, links, images)
o Page Redesigns (Product, Pricing, Use Case)
o New Page Types (webinar hub, video browse)
o Campaign Landing Pages
o Optimization (performance, mobile)
o CMS Migration (e.g., HTML to Drupal)
o Development Tasks (routing, redirects)
Note: Offsite projects (Social, Paid Media, Sales Enablement, Events, etc.)
are handled in Trello by Annmarie Avila.
34. Jira Dashboard
34
Your Dashboard is the main display you see
when you log in to Jira. It provides a quick
overview of:
o All tickets Assigned to You
o Activity Stream of team updates
o Real-time reporting on all Assignees,
Stakeholders, Components, Labels
o Sprint Status
o And more…
Visit the IBMWATSON Dashboard at
https://jsw.ibm.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa?selectPageId=
11858
35. How to Create a Jira Ticket
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1. Go to https://jsw.ibm.com and
click the Create button
2. Fill out the Form, providing the
clarity, context, and details to
communicate your ideas and needs
3. Click Create to submit and Jira will
automatically assign the ticket to
Beverley Sutherland to triage
