This is the story about a software company whose development of a very complex product was failing and how Scrum and Lean principles helped them to win the battle, transitioning from an untenable situation to a successful company with a great product and a highly committed team of engineers building innovative quality software for the new cloud era. Back in 2008, the product team was frustrated, unmotivated and unproductive in their attempts to build Softeng Portal Builder, a Web Content Management solution for the cloud platform. Their approach to development was with the classic water-fall methodology. Months into the project, having more documentation than working software and a high turnover of team members dissatisfied due to their inability to reverse the situation. Having tried everything they could imagine the situation was unsustainable, until they were introduced to Lean and Scrum and a new team of engineers was created. In this session you will learn how Softeng succeed in transforming the worst scenario you could imagine into a fully agile company from top to bottom, using Scrum, Lean development principles and effective engineering techniques. The speakers will explain to you the secrets of the transformation: How they did it, which techniques worked better and which ones didn’t, which were the main problems they found and how they consistently removed them. Also, presenters will explain how they spread the agile principles across all of the organization in order to have a real lean company, empowering people and leading the new era becoming the successful company they are today building high quality software and driving innovative cloud solutions to help companies be more competitive. It is recommended that the audience have a basic understanding about Agile and business and organizational problems that typically arise when developing software products and/or delivering software solutions.

1. proyecto:
The Softeng Portal Builder Story:
From Hell to Lean, From Zero to Cloud
Carlos Colell Sorinas
CEO
ccolell@softeng.es
October - 3 2012

2. Softeng in 1 minute
About SOFTENG
Consulting & software engineering since ‘97
Top Microsoft Partner in Spain
Solutions to improve your competitiveness
Optimizing your Increase your We make
systems productivity innovation real
Optimizamos Hacemos realidad
tus sistemas la innovación

3. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
97-2005: Dreaming to build a product

4. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
2006: We started Portal Builder…

5. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
2007: We got a mess !!

6. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
2008: With Lean we found the route

7. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
2009: With Scrum we saw the light…
CHAOS

8. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
2010: Reengineering put us on the road

9. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
2010: Scrum&Lean helped us to take off

10. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
2011: All together took us to the cloud…

11. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
2012: Innovating with high speed

12. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
Lean was the first pillar for success
Introducing
Lean Development

13. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
Where did Lean dev. came from ?
50’s: JIT –Toyota production System
1990: JIT become known as Lean production
90’s: Lean was adapted for software development
2003: Mary & Tom Poppendieck formalized Lean for
software development
¿WHY ADAPTED? Software always changes, products don’t

14. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
What is Lean Development ?
1 Understanding 7 principles o truths
2 Using practices for applying principles

15. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
The 7 Principles in Lean Development ?
Eliminate waste
Create knowledge
Decide as late as possible
Deliver as fast as possible
Empower the team
Build Quality In
Optimize the whole

16. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
Principle 1: Eliminate Waste
¿Why? Increases productivity
¿How? Ability to know what value is
and capability to see & remove waste:
 Extra features
 Partially done work
 Bugs
 Delays
 Extra documentation
 Context switching
 Relearning

17. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
Principle 2: Create knowledge
¿Why? => Increase predictability
¿How?
 Iterative design
 Feedback from customer asap
 Feedback from Tests (CI)
 Extensible architecture
Decisions based on facts produce the most predictable results

18. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
Principle 3: Decide as late as possible
¿Why? Better decisions
¿How?
 Keeping options open….
 …delaying irreversible decisions to…
 “Last responsible moment” and then..
 Validate decisions asap

19. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
Principle 4: Deliver as fast as possible
¿Why? Competitive advantage
¿How?
 Remove “waste” systematically
 Constant Velocity requires quality
 Team committed to continually improve processes
Velocity is the absence of waste

20. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
Principle 5: Empower the team
¿Why? Team can not be orchestrated (if decisions are
made as late as possible + there is a fast execution)
¿How?
 Give Autonomy
 Synchronization
 Skilled Team
Trust your team to self-organize to meet the goals

21. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
Principle 6: Build quality in
¿Why? To prevent defects
¿How?
 Not allowing defects !–> TDD + CI
 Always simple , then growing (refactoring)
 Obtaining feedback quickly
 Maintainable: Adaptable and extensible
 Discipline
 Accomplish its purpose and usability

22. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
Principle 7: See the whole
Optimize the
whole value
stream, avoiding
optimizing by
decomposition.

23. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
Benefits obtained
More productive
Innovation surface
Happy customers
Strong team
Lean principles applied for all company services

24. The Softeng Portal Builder Story
Key things I have learned as PO
Get ride of Technical Debt, asap.
Create a Skilled Team and help them to develop
Keep in mind the 7 principles of Lean
Let automatize: Cont.Int, Cont.Deployment, Tests
Do an extra-effort defining & prioritizing the stories
Provide feedback to the team before sprint ends.
Provide an updated vision to the team, regularly

25. proyecto:
¡Thank You!
Carlos Colell Sorinas
CEO
Email: ccolell@softeng.es
Twitter: @ccolell
Barcelona: Pau Claris, 162-164 2ª Planta
Madrid: Avda. Doctor Arce, 14