1. Time to market refers to the time from when an idea is conceived to when it generates revenue. Most of this time is actually spent before development begins, such as planning and defining requirements. 2. Reducing buffers, rework, and technical debt are the biggest drivers of improving time to market. Working in parallel on features often increases time to market compared to serial development since features reach customers later. 3. Frequent releases that are measured and have a short planning cycle allow for continuous learning and improvement of time to market. Quality, flow, and removing bottlenecks are also important to optimize the development process.

1. What everyone should know about
time to market
Stephan Schmidt, Vice CTO, brands4friends

2. Me
Stephan Schmidt
Vice CTO brands4friends
@codemonkeyism
www.codemonkeyism.com
stephan.schmidt@brands4friends.de

3. 3

5. brands4friends
No.1 Shopping Club in Germany
> 360k daily visitors
> 4.5M Users
eBay company
5 20.04.12 WJAX 2011

6. 6

7. 7

8. Development at
brands4friends
Team
Java and web developers,
data warehouse developers
Process
Scrum since 2009
Kanban for DWH since
2012

9. Time to Market

10. Why?
10

11. If a feature is worth
developing, it‘s
worth getting to
market sooner.

12. Longer sales Larger market share
Revenue
Early market Late Time
entry market entry
Reinertsen 1998

13. What is time to market?
From idea to
making money.
Not from start of project!

14. Why does time to market
get worse?

15. Time
Unmaintainable
to Code
Market
Processes
More people
Founders no
longer focus
on product
Startup
Time

16. Time to market is a
huge lever.

17. Technology is not
a huge driver.

18. Buffers are the
biggest driver.
18

19. Development Start
Idea
Front-up Development
Problems are here
Everyone focuses
here

20. Start
Need Ship
42% 58%
Need Ship
40% 60%
Need
Ship
51% 49%
Need Ship
56% 44%
-3 Years 0 3 Years
Reinertsen 1998

21. Market
Opportunity
Feeling of
urgency
Time relative to competitor
Reinertsen 1998

22. Top Management Attention of top
possible impact management for a
project
Reinertsen 1998

23. >50%
of
time
is
spent
before
development.
Time
to
market
in
development
is
a
solved
problem.

24. Development is a
solved problem
24

25. Concrete Steps?

26. Measure

27. Low quality and rework
is one of the biggest
wastes in software
development.

28. Bug tracking is an anti-
pattern.
Don't do bugs.

29. 1. Feature
2. Feature
1. Feature
2. Feature
3. Feature
4. Feature
5. Feature
3. Feature
4. Feature
5. Feature
Time Time
Parallel Serial

30. 1. Feature
2. Feature
1. Feature
2. Feature
3. Feature
4. Feature
5. Feature
3. Feature
4. Feature
5. Feature
Time Time
5 15

31. Time
Developed Released
36

32. Time
Developed Released
54
Time
Developed Released
36

33. Time
Developed Released
66
Time
Developed Released
36

34. Time
Developed Released
54
Time
Developed Released
30

35. Time
Developed Released
54
6 Months
Time
Developed Released
9 Months
30

36. 36

37. 1. Measure, measure, measure
2. Increase quality
3. Reduce rework
4. Frequent releases
5. Stop working in parallel
6. Shorter stories
7. Visualize and manage flow
8. Rigorously cancel meetings
9. Continuous deployment
10. Shorten product management
11. No single point of failure or bottleneck
12. Leveling work

39. Time to Market Cheat Sheet 5
Working in Parallel vs. Serialized work Release cycles and earned money
3
1. Feature
!"#$%&'()*+*"&,"-+.)"'&"/012)'
Developed
Developed
Developed
2. Feature
1. Feature
2. Feature
3. Feature
4. Feature
5. Feature
3. Feature
1. Measure
4. Feature
Time Time
Time
5. Feature !"#$%#&#%'&()*'#+,#-.*(/#0'1'2.3+456#+(7,#
Time Time -.*(/#5'845#(.#9&*:'(#,..4'*"
Released
Released
Released
;"#<+9'#(.#9&*:'(#+,#&#(34)#2'1'*"
!"# !"#
1 ="#>)?'*,#&*'#(/'#@+55',(#0*+1'*"
A"#<'B/4.2.5C#+,#,&'#&#/)5'#0*+1'*"
Working in parallel reduces your time to market and your income. When If you release twice a year, developing one feature a This gets even better. When you reduce your release
5 developers work on 5 features in parallel, each feature taking 5 month then after 6 months you have released 6 cycle to 1 month, releasing 12 times a year, you will
months, it will take 5 months for the first one to reach the market. If features. They earn you money for 6 months, the make $66,000 with the same features and mostly the 6. >50% of time is spent before
you work feature after feature, assuming the developers can work on second half of the year. Suppose every released feature same costs. The optimum you can achieve are
one feature in parallel, it takes one month for the first feature to reach makes you $1000 per month, that's $36,000 a year. continuous releases. But as you can see from the
development.
market Released features earn you money. While when working in When you reduce your release cycle to 3 months, numbers: 36,54,66 doe converge. You cannot optimize
parallel you do not earn money for 5 months, whereas you have earned releasing 4 times a year, this will result in more money, forever and need to find the sweet spot for your
10 units of money otherwise. $54,000 per year. Just changing realeases made you environment.
7. Time to market in development is a
nearly twice the money. solved problem.
How low-value features block high value features Time to market over time
Time
Developed
Developed
Unmaintainable
to Code
Market
Processes
Time Time
More people
Released
Released
Founders no
longer focus
on product
6 Months
Startup
4
9 Months
$%# !"# Time
Developing features that don't earn you money, will really cost you. If In the beginning of a company, as a startup, time to market is short.
50% of your features do not earn money, then depending on release Founders are either developing themselves or are sitting right next to
cycles and order you can lose 50% of new earnings. Developing developers. Founders are product managers themselves. Over time this
features that do not earn money, will not only cost you money for changes. Time to market grows larger when founders no longer focus on
development, but will also block features that earn you money. In this product, when processes are introduced, more people are hired and code
example a feature is pushed 3 months later, from 6 months to 9 gets unmaintainable. It's easy to not not see the challenge, because in the
months.
2 beginning everthing looks fine.

40. We‘re hiring :-)
40

41. Thanks!
@codemonkeyism
stephan.schmidt@brands4friends.de

42. Images CC from Flickr:
nimboo, imjustcreative,
gremionis, justonlysteve,
John_Scone, Matthias
Wicke, irisgodd3ss,
TunnelBug, alandd,
seasonal wanderer,
raulbarraltamayo, Gilmoth,
Dunechaser, graftedno1
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