Milestones, SHUV, Roadmaps - Oh My!

Milestones, SHUV,
Roadmaps - Oh My!
https://www.rubick.com/milestones-not-projects/
copyright 2023 @ techexpressoconsulting.com
Presented by Jacqueline Sanders-Blackman

Teams thrive when they are delivering value
every 2 - 3 Sprints!
● They have a constant stream of achievement
● People develop a sense of momentum and confidence
● Helps bond a team together
● Develop the ability to
critique
● Increase respect for other
disciplines
● Reduce isolation of work
2

MVP
Aspiration/Vision
Research - Discovery
Infrastructure
Experimentation
Proof of Concept
Design
Wireframe
Spikes -
Prototype
4

5
Project
Aspiration/Vision
Design
Wireframe

6

Define the Milestone Discovery/Experimentation Design, Development, Release
Lookahead

Prioritization Roadmap New Terminology
8
● Customer Problem
● Project
● Milestones/
Epics
(T-shirt Sizes)
● Customer Description
● Deliverable
○ Vertical Slices
○ Customer Value
● LOE (versus Duration)
● IC Eng Allocation
● RICE

9

10
Milestone Dashboards

SHUV Your Milestones Along
● Small … No More Monolithic Features
○ One - Three Sprints of work
○ One Milestone Forms a Project
○ Project can be Experimental, Feature or Enabler
● High Quality … MVP
● Understandable … Ability Statements
● Valuable (Customer/Business/Technical Value) … RICE
11

No More Monolithic Delivery
● Good Enough
● It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect
● It doesn’t have to please all of the people in the first release
● Giving the customer something while the need is at its peak is
better than something that’s perfect but too late
● Perfection is the enemy of Agile
● You can make it perfect but you have no proof it’s really what the
customer wants or needs
12

13

14

15

Give and Take Is Necessary!
16
Current Challenge: Creating Milestone Size Projects!
Opt A: High Profile Features
(Automated Tail, Neck, Ears)
Opt B: Technical Enablers Stories
Not An Option: “I Want It All” (6 Months)

Give and Take Is Necessary!
17
Current Challenge: Creating Milestone Size Projects!
Opt A: High Profile Features
(Automated Tail, Neck, Ears)
Opt B: Technical Enablers Stories
Not An Option: “I Want It All” (6 Months)

Product: Be Careful What You Ask for And How You Ask It
18
❏ Build an API
❏ Create a Drop Down
❏ Merge Data Tables
❏ Enhance Image Processing
❏ Migrate Data
❏ Stabilize Data
❏ Backend Migration
❏ Image Processing
❏ Create a Predictive Model
❏ Design Frontend
❏ Create Content
❏ Work on the Back End
❏ Ability to See My Logo
❏ Ability to Predict My Customers
❏ Ability to Enhance My Pictures
❏ Ability to receive recommendations for future
campaigns
❏ To be able to see a visible improvement of my
images
❏ To be able to receive image
recommendations
❏ To be able to see an increase in my
engagement
❏ To see a 10% increase in opened messages
What’s the Difference Between The Lists

Milestones: Robo Dog Needs the Ability to See the
“Robo-Dog Toy” In Order To Play With and Destroy It!
19
VS
$$$$$

Milestones: Robo Dog Needs the Ability to Detect the
“Robo-Dog Toy” In Order To Play With and Destroy It!
20
VS
$$
$$$$
$$$$$

21
Milestone Breakout
How Many User Stories Do You See?

22
❏ Body, Legs and Head
❏ Automated Head, Legs, Tail
OR
❏ Body
❏ Legs
❏ Head
❏ Head Automation
❏ Ears
❏ Ears Automation
❏ Mouth
❏ Mouth Automation
❏ Legs
❏ Front Legs Automation
❏ Hind Legs Automation
❏ Jumping Automation
❏ Walking Automation
❏ Tail
❏ Tail Automation
Milestones (Features) vs Stories (Building Blocks)

23
How Much Are Customers Willing To Pay? How Many
Customers Are Willing To Pay Our Price?

0
1
2
3
5
8
13
20
40
100
24

25
0
1
2
3
5
8
13
40
100
___ Body
___ Legs
___ Head
___ Ears
___ Mouth
___ Legs
___ Tail
___ Mouth Automation
___ Leg Automation
___ Tail Automation
___ Head Automation
___ Walking Automation
___ Jumping Automation
3
20
40 1 2
3

26
It takes several different
Squad members to create
a slice of a hamburger
from the top to bottom.
A story takes contributions
of many engineers,
including the QA.
IC Allocation Can Be
Misleading

27
❏ 5 Developers x 6 Story Points = 35
Story Points
(Velocity Approximation for New Teams)
❏ What can you get for 35 Points (1
Sprint)?
❏ What can you get for for 70 Points (2
Sprints)?
❏ What can you get for 105 Points (3
Sprints)?
How Do We Want To Spend Our Story Points?

28
Are Level of Effort (LOE) and Duration the Same?
❖ LOE = 3 Weeks to Complete the
Work
❖ Team Velocity is typically 35
❖ The Work Starts Sprint 8
❖ Squad Availability is impacted by
➢ Spring Break
➢ Vacation
➢ Paternity Leave
❖ Actual Duration is Unknown during
roadmap planning
Solution: T-Shirt Sizes

29

30
How Much Do We Want To
Spend (Story Points), If
There Are No Guarantees
They Will Buy It?

31
What if we estimated a
Milestone as a Small T-shirt
size, then when the squad
starts refinement the story
turns into an XXL?
What do we do now?

Figuring Out the Most Valuable Work
● We can figure out the cost
● Have a way to measure potential value
● Have a way to confirm actual value
● Milestone Level of Effort (LOE) is shorthand / good
enough for decision making
● Do just enough planning
32

Being Scrappy Is Better Than Scrapping the Idea!
33
Don’t Let Perfection Get In the Way of Progress!
6 Weeks (without Automation)
6 Months

We will track the success of our roadmaps via the success of the milestones in the project.
34
?

35
The purpose of Milestones is to
ensure every 3 Sprints (or less) We
Want to Get the Customer Reaction,
Feedback and Buy-In.

36

37

Sometimes A Milestone Is a Throw Away
Why do we need to be okay with that?
38

Milestones Build Trust
● Small Units of Value Earn Trust
● Steady Stream of Values/Milestones
● Reassuring to see the team continuously learning from
customer feedback and adapting
● Faster Releases feel like Higher Velocity
● Steady stream of value to the customer (or a subset of
customers via feature flags)
39

Rubick Milestone Approach
https://www.rubick.com/milestones-not-projects/

41
jsb@technologyexpresso.consulting
855-484-6837
linkedin.com/in/jacqueline007
@Jacqueline007
Stay in Touch
www.quora.com/proﬁle/Jacqueline-Sanders-Blackman

Appendix

Relative Sizing & Estimating Recommended Reading
● Story Pointing Using Planning Poker
● Slicing the Cake
● User Story Mapping and Painting the Big Picture
● Humanizing Work - Story Splitting Guide

Project and Milestones
Breaking a project into Milestones lets you shape projects.
We will track the success of our roadmaps via the success of the Milestones in the project.
Milestones will follow the SHUV acronym
● S - Small- One to three Sprints, One or more milestones form a project
● H - High Quality - Leave the codebase and user experience better than when you started; The
exception when doing a prototype or experiment (More to come on enabling this approach in
the MC environment)
● U - Understandable - Name so that you understand the value being delivered by the approach
● V - Valuable - You should be able to stop midway. Even if you don’t ﬁnish all the
Milestones, you should have delivered customer value.
A good article that elaborates on the deﬁnition of good milestones
44

● Customer
Problem
● Project
● Milestones/
Epics
(T-shirt Sizes)
● Customer
Description
● Deliverable
● LOE (Not
Duration)
● IC Eng
Allocation
● RICE
45

Effort Complexity
(Learning Curve/Risk)
Dependencies Unknowns Precision Example
1 Story Points Piece of Cake Straight Forward - Minute - Tricycle
2 Story Points No-Brainer Easy - Very Little - Cycle
3 Story Points Some Effort Normal - Little - Scooter
5 Story Points Considerable Effort - Approx a Half
of a Sprint
Somewhat of a Challenge 1 at most Some Some Car
8 Story Points A lot of Work A Definite Challenge 1 - 2 possibly Much Some Bus
13 Story Points Huge - More than a full Sprint
(Split into smaller stories)
Difficult Several A Lot A Lot Truck
20 Story Points More than 2 Sprints (Create a
Sprike if needed)
Unpredictable/Very Hard A Lot A Lot More Very Detailed Train
40 Story Points More than 4 Sprints (Create one or
more spikes); Multi-team effort
Unprecedented/Very Risky A Whole Lot A Whole Lot Nearly Perfect Aeroplane
46

Customer
Problem
Initiative focus areas support revenue levers. Levers will be mapped to the initiative level.
Roadmap Projects appear on your roadmaps.
Project A project is a complex undertaking by one or more squads within the boundaries of time, budget, and staffing that produces a desired
outcome that adds significant customer value; (1) Frame a Customer Problem (2) Clear Definition of Done (3) Max t-shirt size for Positive
ROI on Project (4) Alignment to SCP Customer Experience ; Projects should be measurable and have input/output KPIs. All projects will
report back on outcomes before further investment. Six weeks (3 sprints) or less.
Epic Epic is a body of work that provides customer value (i.e. a feature within the project) that can be broken down into specific user stories. A
Epic is shippable. An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) can help an organization understand whether the problem it seeks to solve can be
solved with in the ROI targets.
Milestone/S
HUV
Milestone
Types:
- Def
Problem
- Def
Solution
(i.e.
Experiment)
- Implement
● S - Small- One to three sprints, One or more milestones form a project
● H - High Quality - Leave the codebase and user experience better than when you started; The exception when doing a prototype
or experiment (More to come on enabling this approach in the MC environment)
● U - Understandable - Name so that you understand the value being delivered by the approach
● V - Valuable - You should be able to stop midway. Even if you don’t finish all the milestones, you should have delivered
customer value. A Milestone is standalone and should be shippable.
An MVF, sometimes referred to as an experimental feature, is similar to a minimum viable product (MVP) but at the feature level. An MVF
can help an organization determine whether the proposed solution is the right one.
User Story A user story is the smallest unit of work in an agile (interactive and incremental) framework. It’s an end goal, expressed from the software
user’s (the customer’s) perspective. Each user story is expected to yield an implemented contribution to the value of the overall product,
irrespective of the order of implementation; a good story is captured by the INVEST formula. User stories are broken down into
manageable units called tasks. The squad members complete tasks and it allows the squad to track completion. A task is typically an
individual contribution. A story is a collaboration of various squad members.
47

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