When PO "Wants it all and wants it Now" and the team says "Tell us what you really really want" from this big ask. Prioritization, approaches, Learning releases, etc

1. How to get
Freddie Mercury and Spice
Girls together on stage
Ardita Karaj
@ardita_k
#AAB18

2. Hello!
Ardita Karaj
@ardita_k
Ardita@IndustrialLogic.ca

3. New story!
• Is it Sprint planning yet?
• Didn’t we just plan…
like ..yesterday?
• But we do Kanban!!
• How did it get to our
backlog so quickly?
• After 10 min talk: This
doesn’t seem small!
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

4. Soooo…
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

5. I want it
ALL!
And I want
it NOW!
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

6. Let’s get in to it
• Do it all!
• Start planning everything
• Get approval for over time
budget
• Cancel family plans
• Get the Pizza delivery on
speed dial
• Bring Advil on every desk
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

7. Or
Ask again
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

8. Starting with Story mapping
We can’t write User
Stories if we don’t know
Users well, their Stories
and their Desires
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

9. Before Story Mapping
• What should we see/not see if this is in place today?
• Does this fit with our strategy (grow, new, compete, operationalize,..)?
• Does this help us achieve our Goals/KPIs/Learnings?
• Why is this more important than what we are doing now?
• What do we know about the user/customer (new, existing, segment..)?
• Any research that proves that if we do this we will be successful?
• What do we want to learn?
• What risks do we see?
• ….
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

10. Smallest thing possible
If you are not embarrassed by it, you released too late
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage
: a Learning release

11. Learning is not free: Learning Releases
Dual Track image: courtesy of Jeff Patton
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

12. Research - Deliver with ~no code changes
• Wizard of Oz (pretty on UI but all manual behind, Zappos)
• Concierge MVP (would you let me do your grocery and you go
have a coffee, DropBox with 3 min video)
• Smoke test (bunch of Facebook test with different price/
color/ picture…)
• Virgin test (Virgin airlines, 1 airplane doing 1 trip)
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

13. Example on research : Lost my name
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

14. Ruthless Prioritization
• What’s the best thing you can do today, not 6 months from now
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

15. How do we prioritize
• Who screams louder? What’s the rank of the sponsor?
• What is the metric?
• Cost of Delay? Divided by Duration?
• Click Through Rate?
• New customers? Retain current/Increase loyalty? ….
• Start when?
• If there is a (true) deadline, when should we start?
• Should we stop everything we are working at now?
• Can it wait till next sprint?
• Do nothing?
• Example: Do we start with all 4 customers at the same time or finish 2 first and
then start the other two? (4 features were equal)
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

16. Example: prioritize smallest thing
Compliance change, QC vs Canada
• What is the real problem?
• Who are the real-real customers?
• What is the real-real deadline? Urgency?
• What do we really-really need by that deadline?
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

17. But we need more: Technical backbone
• What do we have?
• What is our release frequency now?
• Do we have automated tests in place?
• Can we Deploy (not Release)
• Dark launch
• A/B test
• Feature toggle
• Blue/Green
• Do we have monitoring of production in place?
• Do we have version control? Shared ownership? Have we eliminated branches?
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

18. Co-labor-ation FTW!
• Do we have cross functional teams?
• Who else do we need to be successful?
• Are they able to work with us and our
urgency?
• Do we have collaborative customers?
• Do we have physical space that allows us
to work closer?
• Do we have tools/ways to collaborate with
remote people?
• Is another team able to take this sooner?
• Shared ownership of code
• Dynamic team forming: people with this
knowledge on another team
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

19. Example: New platform for a new shipment
delivery tracking system
• New platform for dealers to track shipment delivery to stores
• New infrastructure: servers, authentication, configuration, etc
• Environments populated as the code evolved and covering the
issues found on previous environment (Dev/QA/Prod)
• Dealers constantly took part on Demo and gave feedback
• Training and communication in modules for all effected users
• Tests in place from beginning for all the code
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

20. All together
• Research/Get to know
• Prioritize and make it small-er
• Create technical wealth
• Collaborate everywhere
Ardita Karaj: Getting Freddy Mercury and Spice Girls Together on Stage

21. Singing in harmony
We don’t need to be heroes.
We need to be good collaborators.
Always discussing as a team.
That gets the right thing done right.
Many times.
Without drama.
Sustainably.
@ardita_k
Ardita@IndustrialLogic.ca