This presentation was part of a webinar presented by AgilistaPM (www.agilistapm.com) on 11/9/2010.
Before you can harness the full power of Agile development methodologies you must first have a well defined set of product requirements or backlog. This presentation walks you through the process of gathering requirements through opportunity assessment, solution discover and construction.
Actionable Requirements: The key to Agile Innovation
1. Actionable Requirements for
Agile Innovation
Donna Reed
donna@AgilistaPM.com
www.AgilistaPM.com
Hosted by…
Armond Mehrabian
amehrabian@portofinosolutions.com
www.portofinosolutions.com
2. Actionable Requirements
The challenges we face
Defining product requirements
Assessing opportunities
Discovering solutions
Tools for opportunity assessment
The process of solution discovery and definition
The agile product innovation process
Q & A
4. Actionable Requirements
Why is it so difficult?
It’s political
Requires deep domain knowledge
Requires leadership
5. Actionable Requirements
Agile teams are now developing software more quickly than ever
before. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean they are always aimed at
building the right products.
-Mike Cohn
12. Actionable Requirements
Some best practices
Have a Customer Advisory Board (CAB)
Need 2 for enterprise software
Plan 3-6 months in advance
Your team
Facilitator
Helper
Observer/Photographer
Try it on internal customers and teams first!
16. Actionable Requirements
Conclusion
We can have a process for requirements gathering
Three phases to actionable requirements
People Tools/Artifacts
Opportunity
Assessment
Product Mkg
Product Mgmnt
Architecture
MRD
Innovation Games
Solution Discovery
and Design
User Experience
Lead Engineer
Product Mgr
PRD
Prototype
HiFi Wireframe
Solution Execution Engineering/Test
Teams
Fully functioning
product
17. 17
17
PDU Information
You have earned 1 PDU for this webinar
Enter as “Category 4: Other Providers“
Provider name: Armond Mehrabian
Address: 1317 Northview Rd
City: Escondido
State/Province: CA
Zip/Postal code: 92029
Country: USA
Phone number: (760) 354-9053
URL: http://www.portofinosolutions.com
E-mail address: amehrabian@portofinosolutions.com
Twitter: @armond_m
18. Actionable Requirements
Resources:
Innovation Games – Luke Hohmann
Ten Faces of Innovation – Tom Kelley
Inspired – Marty Cagan
Purple Cow – Seth Godin
Agile Estimation and Planning – Mike Cohn
Dilbert – Scott Adams
It is the most important part of the Product Lifecycle.
Q) Is it hard? Why?
Q) Is it fun? Why?
As product innovators, we get to be the thought leaders behind these products.
A lot of people are involved in creating an innovative product but one person pulls all the ideas together and makes it a cohesive solution. That’s you.
Do you want to be the thought leader behind these products?
I want to build one of these…
Relate my own experience
Need for leadership.
Are you a leader, manager, or coordinator?
Engineers expect you to be the product’s owner, thought leader,
“Show me when you’re all done”
“I’ve already told you what I want”
“It’s not my job to make your product better”
Common approaches that don’t work very well
The hot potato catching contest
Ask user for a list of
Features they want
Features they don’t like
Features they need to be improved. How?
Ask customer to design the user interface
Ask customer to write a document or fill out a survey
Poll the audience for their personal experiences on what makes it so hard.
Domain Knowledge
How many of you are in a different business domain than you were three years ago?
Is your employer helping you with the learning curve? How?
Leadership
If you lack confidence the customer will sense it and won’t give you their time.
You need to be in the driver’s seat and lead the process
Invest the necessary effort in preparation
It’s not enough to plan, coordinate and facilitate. You also have to shepherd the participants through the process.
Q) Do you use Agile development methodology? Has it improved the overall delivery cycle?
Q) Why has agile been so successful in the engineering realm?
A) It’s a repeatable process. It’s action oriented with clear deliverables. It’s light weight.
What we need is:
Agile/Scrum has a paradigm for the development of products
What we need is a set of tools and processes that will help us achieve similar advances in the requirements gathering process
- The rest of this talk is how to come up with actionable requirements for the Agile development team so that we can have a complete agile innovation process
It’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of fun.
Show your leadership.
Pitfalls
Apologizing for your lack of knowledge and/or preparation.
Asking questions like “what don’t you like about the system?”
Being tentative about the efficacy of your methods.
Unforgiveable sin: Wasting their time. You probably won’t get a second chance.
If you’re new to the industry/problem space
Get to know the customer and their domain
How the customer uses your product
If you’re new to the industry/problem space
Get to know the customer and their domain
How the customer uses your product
If you’re new to the industry/problem space
Get to know the customer and their domain
How the customer uses your product
Great to use with Start Your Day.
Benefits
Potentially lead to expanded boundaries
Opportunities for synergy with other products on the market
license, acquire, partner, be acquired
Examples
On-boarding an employee
Ordering supplies
Auto collision
Towing company needs to be paid
Provide estimate To you
Is it a total loss?
Notify your insurance company
You need a rental car
The car needs to be brought to the shop
The insurance company needs to approve the damage and payment
What if there are additional damage discovered?
Police report?
Status to customer
By phone – IVR?
By web through status and pictures
By text message
By email, fax?
Customer Satisfaction Index
Can we become more profitable by broadening our portfolio?
They have to see it and feel it before they know what they want
Feasibility is assessed
All the customer-facing interaction must be discovered and designed
Wireframes
Interaction and information architecture
Usability
Prototypes
Visual design
Result is a high fidelity prototype