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TRANSCRIPT
Product Road Mapping
Rob Nickolaus, Krista Odbert
Lincoln Agile Community Meetup
2.25.2014
Who are we?
• Rob Nickolaus
– Technical Lead at FACTS / NBS for 6 years
– Small and medium sized companies
– In Lincoln for 27 years
• Krista Odbert
– K-12 Product Manager
– At FACTS / NBS for 13 years
Who are we?
• Nelnet Business Solutions (or FACTS Management) – a division of Nelnet
• 25+ years– Acquired by Nelnet 7 years ago
• About 200 employees• Based in downtown Lincoln + Omaha office• Provide software/services for K-12 and higher
education schools– Payment processing– Payment plans (e.g. tuition)– Financial needs assessment
Our Background
• Our history (why we’re agile-converts)– Started project 3 years ago with waterfall– Couldn’t find the forest for the trees– Rob had a bright idea
• How have we been successful at the user story and sprint level– Project became more tangible less overwhelming– Quickly saw progress– Great team buy in
• Why do we need to look further out?– Budget our time for other resource needs– Large project contention/prioritization– Incorporate larger audience in our feedback
TO THE WABACPains
User story mapping
Kano survey
What keeps us up at night
• Successes within a sprint or user story haven’t transcended to bigger chunks
• About 3-5 releases per year– “What’s going to be in the next few releases?”– No road map of where we’re heading (that we’ve committed to)
• Shallow backlog of stories (2-4 sprints)– Don’t know how much is left in the project
• Our estimates stop at a user story– Not effective to estimate every story out there when they won’t
be touched for months (or longer)
• Executives want to know ‘when is it all done?’• Team wants to see where we’re going
Road Map Factors
January June December
Release Cycle
Business Cycle
Sales & School Cycle
What we’ve used in the past
• User story mapping (components)
– Components = high level placeholders items not in user stories
– Useful for grouping stories together as a theme
– Helps for seasonal-use planning
– Helps to keep from stepping on each other’s toes within a sprint
What we’ve used in the past
• Kano survey – What it is
• Attaches emotion to a feature which helps understand the value
– Helps to quickly prioritize groups of user stories– Conducted internally and externally
• Internally was received well• Externally was used in another market and wasn’t received as well• Know your audience
– Could be useful for gauging customer feedback
Kano
• Hotel example
– “Basic” = Hot water in room
– “Excitement” = Cookies upon check-in
– “Performance” = Card-activated security
– “Indifferent” = Control your lights with a smart phone
WHAT WE’RE TRYINGAgile product planning
Domain Driven Design
Agile product planning
• Component/idea draft• Draft initial user stories surrounding the idea with
acceptance criteria• Revise user stories/acceptance criteria with development
or estimate (planning poker)• Engage UX ahead of sprint when needed• Story is slotted for sprint• Group Think (optional)• Story Kick-off to Development
– Organize kick off with Ops, Training, Testing, Dev– Identify too big stories and break further– Development task breakdown begins
PRODPAD DEMO
Coming Soon in 3D
• Domain-driven Design– Shared model and language between business and
technical– Gets the business team, analysis, developers, and testers
on the same page– Requires up-front design time (complex domains typically)
• Just started trying this– Two developers attended a session at conference,
researched and presented concept– They led the team through the first epic– Deliverable was a model and stories in backlog (10-15)
• Created a user story to encapsulate the DDD, story generation, and planning poker
DDD – How we benefited
• How we benefited– Created a well-thought out roadmap for the
component
– Found missing stories
– Found inconsistencies between initial stories
– User stories mesh with the model we will code against
– Everyone has the same language
– No coding necessary to get these benefits
– Identify areas where we need in-depth design, wire-frames, or UX research
WHAT WE WANT TO TRY NEXTProject/Program Estimation
Better Release Planning
Program/Project-Level Estimation
• Use a sample-analyze-compare technique
• Works at portfolio, project, or theme level
• Uses ‘points’ at each level
• Requires in-depth knowledge of some areas and ability to compare to other items at that level
Step 1 – Identify your epics
Epic 1
Epic 2
Epic 4
Epic 3
• List all epics
• Pick one that is well-understood for further estimation
Step 2 – Break epic into user stories
Epic 2
B
A
CF
D
E
• For one epic, list all user stories• Pick three stories for further
estimation
Step 3 – Analyze user stories
B
C
D
• Estimate points for each of 3 stories– Break each of 3 stories into
tasks if need be
Step 4 – Score other user stories
Epic 2
B
A
C F
D
E
• Estimate all other stories in epic relative to three stories estimated
• Sum up story points to the epic
Step 5 – Estimate Epics
Epic 1
Epic 2
Epic 4
Epic 3
• Size each epic relative to each other
• Sum up to get Project estimate (rough)
Program/Project-Level Estimation
• Once team(s) start projects, velocity is available
• Can start to measure ‘epic points’ delivered per unit of time
NOTE: We haven’t tried this yet!!
Better Release Planning
• Want to set (and hit) Release goals
– Helps Operations and Training in planning
– Build confidence throughout organization
• Demonstrate momentum
• Provides Management sound bites
WRAP-UP
What We’ve Covered
• Our history and scars
• Components (user story mapping)
• Kano survey
• Agile Product Planning
• Domain Driven Design
• Project-level estimation
• Better Release Planning
QUESTIONS?
QUESTIONS?
Our Contact Info
• Rob Nickolaus, Technical Lead
– (402) 730-0007 (cell)
• Krista Odbert, Product Owner
– (402) 937-4198 (cell)
Resources
• ProdPad– www.prodpad.com
• User Story mapping– http://winnipegagilist.blogspot.com/2012/03/ho
w-to-create-user-story-map.html
• Kano model– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model
– http://www.slideshare.net/jasonmesut/kano-a-quick-intro