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The agile journey of a start up From a laptop in a box to a successful launch
The agile journey of a start up
From a laptop in a box to a successful launch
Hi, I’m Elise
2014
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Investment services
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Investment services
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Investment services
Low fees! Sign up in your PJs!
Unbiased!
April 1 2016
Gareth - Dev
Taylor - Designer
Dane - Dev
Sahil - Investments, Genius
Harry - CEO
Anthony - Digital Strategy
Me - Product Grungle - Morale
Laptop in a box
Work out what is going on
My grand discoveries
The May deadline
The May deadline
Well pretty much anyway
👌Development practises
were on point
DevOps
Pairing to teach or on difficult stuff
Automated testing
Then why did they hire me?
Working softwareFast FeedbackCollaboration
Working software
Back end and front end developed on separate time
frames
Working on post MVP integrations.
Feedback
Very little testing with potential customers.
Collaboration
Multiple backlogs
It all lived in one (very smart) guy’s head.
How can we build a shared view of where we are
going?
The May deadline
not enough time
not enough knowledge
not enough social capital
Let’s get a “wall”!
Let’s have one github repository for requirements!
Let’s prioritise our backlog of work!
Lets’s do retrospectives!
Most of it didn’t
Some of this stuff worked right away!
The May deadline
“Don’t half ass two things. Whole ass one thing.”
-Ron Swanson
So long May deadline
The good news…
Public beta!!!
How did we do it?
More time?
Daily standups
A wall just the way we like it
Clearly defined solution for every feature
MVP
Concierge onboarding
#NoEstimates
Analysis
UX + test
Design + test
Build
Review
Done!!!
Backlog
What was the special sauce?
Set a clear deadline we all believed in
Set a challenging but believable scope
Enable the team to create a sense of urgency.
“Bite off more than you can chew and then chew like heck”
- Peter Brock
Iterate like heck
The wall
Beta = done Deadline = achieved What happens next?
For us it was very obvious
Tech lead prioritises
Tech lead and product manager prioritise
A wild gantt chart appears
Team prioritises
SMEs prioritise
Executive prioritises
“Something is very wrong with prioritisation”
I was wrong
No empowerment
All the urgent work. None of the important work.
Effective delivery ✅
Collective ownership ❌
Innovation mindset ❌
Effective delivery is not enough. You also need
effective discovery.
How do we improve collaboration?
How do we build the right stuff?
Objective Key Results
"a critical thinking framework and ongoing discipline that seeks to ensure employees
work together, focusing their efforts to make measurable contributions."
Objective = qualitative goal
Key result = quantitative metrics of success
decide OKR of the week pitch ideas
agree on ideas
Analysis
UX + test
Design + test
Build
Review
Done!!!
Backlog
Idea Discovery Delivery Done!!!
Analysis = Product Manager
Discovery = cross functional team
Business Risk Value Risk
Usability Risk Technical Risk
OKRs -> empowerment
Discovery -> collaboration
Stop ✋
Tech debt weeks
Workshop time
Design Sprint
Did it help?
You betcha!
Much more ambitious
Focus moves from feature parity to value
More customer research
No more retros of doom
April 1 2017
What I learnt
Building a team is a conscious process
Delivery is only part of the equation. Discovering the problems is the real beast.
Iterate. Learn. Iterate
What you can take away
OKRs are a great way to empower your team.
Try them out!
Drive out features with a truly cross functional team
Give your team(s) the flexibility to define their
practices
Iterate. Learn. Iterate
