Products and innovations are growing in size, complexity, scope and quality demands. The "need for speed" makes the management of these processes even more complex. Analyzing big data reveals valuable hidden knowledge. We already now live in a world were digital resources are constantly available on-line and on-time. The real-time component of planning refers to the ongoing analysis of digital information related to products, their features, customer expectations, and market trends and information. Decisions relevant for product managers refer to when-to-release, what-to-release (which features to offer and to whom), how to balance between functionality and quality, how to re-plan and how to react on changing requirements. The new system called RTPM (Real-Time Product Management) is an enhancement of an existing proprietary ReleasePlanner™ system. The data needs are satisfied from synchronization with the proprietary issue management system Jira. Case study results show the added value in terms of time savings and better release value.

1. 21/10/2014
Slide: 1
Innovative Product Road-mapping
in Consideration of Technical Debt

2. 21/10/2014
Slide: 2
Guenther Ruhe
Jason Ho
Expert Decisions Inc.
ruhe@expertdecisions.com

3. 21/10/2014
Slide: 3
www.expertdecisions.com
EDI was founded 2003 as a spin-off company from the University of Calgary
Offers subscription services for tools and processes targeting optimized
product and portfolio management
• Product release and iteration planning
• Release planning for SCRUM
• Project portfolio planning
• Release optimization with continuous data exchange to JIRA
• Quality driven release planning
• Release planning for management of technical debt
Competitive advantage: Based on a patented technology and cutting-edge
research from the associated laboratory for SEDS.

4. 21/10/2014
Slide: 4
Target audience for the webinar
• Product and project managers for product and service companies
• Executives
• All kind of IT decision-makers
• Business Analysts
Purpose of the webinar
• Understand current deficits in release and service planning
• Understand the notion of technical debt
• Learn about an analytically based approach to combine functional
planning in consideration of technical debt
• Learn about tool support utilizing existing issue management from JIRA
• Get guidance on how to get it started

5. 21/10/2014
Slide: 5
Agenda
• Release planning – What? Why? How? (G)
• Technical debt (G)
• Managing technical debt –
An analytic approach (J)
• Tool support (G)
• Case study (J)
• Summary and outlook (G)
Guenther Ruhe
Trong Tan Ho

6. 21/10/2014
Slide: 6
Planning releases for incremental development
Releases/
iterations
Amountofimplementedfunctionality
Amountofrequestedfunctionality
Releases/
iterations1.1 1.2 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.0 3.1 3.2 4.0 4.1

7. 21/10/2014
Slide: 7
Main challenges in release planning
• Lack of transparency of release decisions
• Dynamically changing business environment
• Stakeholder and customer involvement
• Too much focus on just functionality
• Decisions need to be done more based on objective facts
and analytics
• More reactive than pro-active
• Ignorance of resource and dependency considerations
• Ignorance of technical debt
MTD 2013 7

8. 21/10/2014
Slide: 8
Agenda
• Release planning – What? Why? How?
• Technical debt
• Managing technical debt - An analytic approach
• Tool support
• Case study
• Summary and outlook

9. 21/10/2014
Slide: 9
What is known about financial debt?
- Short term advantages (capital, lump sum)
- Pay back
- A fee is continuously charged until debt is repaid (interest)
- Temporary debt may
be useful or not
... depends
- Can end up in bankruptcy if
debt accumulates beyond
payback ability
Adapted from www.bad-credit-loans.ca

10. 21/10/2014
Slide: 10
What is technical debt?
The accumulated amount/cost of rework needed to move from - -
 the current status (design, coding, testing, documentation) of the software
system to the achieve
 the requested (optimal) status of the software system.
P. Kruchten, R. L. Nord, I. Ozkaya, "Technical debt: from metaphor to theory and practice.“, in IEEE Software, vol. 29 (2012), pp. 18-21.

11. 21/10/2014
Slide: 11
How does financial relates to technical debt?
- Short term advantages (new/more features)
- You have to pay back afterwards
- A fee is charged (interest rate)
- Financial debt potentially
hides current problems
- Could end up in system halts,
operation interruptions
--> technical bankruptcy
- Loss of customers/business/
market share
Adapted from blogs.ripple-rock.com

12. 21/10/2014
Slide: 12
Implications of technical debt
- Product does not achieve its full potential
- Higher total cost/effort needed
Adapted from agilemakingprogress.blogspot.com

13. 21/10/2014
Slide: 13
Agenda:
• Release planning – What? Why? How?
• Technical debt
• Managing technical debt - An analytic approach
• Tool support
• Case study
• Summary and outlook

14. 21/10/2014
Slide: 14
Analytic approach

15. 21/10/2014
Slide: 15
Continuous measurement
Almost all measures of technical debt are proxies and context specific
• Amount of rework effort spent at the different stages of the process
• Refactoring effort
• How many defects have been detected and fixed?
• How many defects are slipping through and how much does this cost?
• How many requirements could not be implemented?
• Degree of coverages gained from testing
• Enhancements that are postponed due to lack of resources
• Code style violations
A combination is usually needed to get the best view of the technical debt
to meet the needs of a specific team or organization.

16. 21/10/2014
Slide: 16
Agenda:
• Release planning – What? Why? How?
• Technical debt
• Managing technical debt - An analytic approach
• Tool support
• Case study
• Summary and outlook

17. 21/10/2014
Slide: 17
Decision support system ReleasePlanner™
• ReleasePlanner™ is a proprietary product offered in the form of
Software as a Service.
• The main functionality of the existing decision support system is:
– Generation of optimized and diversified release plan alternatives
– Maintenance of a feature repository
– Flexible feature and resource modeling capabilities
– Support of active stakeholder involvement
– Pro-active plan analysis capabilities
– Support for interactive scenario planning
• Based on cutting-edge research at lab SEDS (University of Calgary)
• Applied in 350+ customer and trial projects
• US patented technology

18. 21/10/2014
Slide: 18
18
Synergy between ReleasePlanner and JIRA

19. 21/10/2014
Slide: 19
Agenda:
• Release planning – What? Why? How?
• Technical debt
• Managing technical debt - An analytic approach
• Tool support
• Case study
• Summary and outlook

20. 21/10/2014
Slide: 20
Demo Project – ReleasePlanner™
• We apply our own tool on our release process

21. 21/10/2014
Slide: 21
Step 1: Define TD metrics
Identify the TD metrics that are specific to the project context
• Amount of rework effort spent at the different stages of the process – tracked by
legacy data learning – ReleasePlanner™
• Refactoring effort – tracked by JIRA internal ‘enhancements’ – refactoring
• How many defects have been detected and fixed? – tracked by JIRA defects
• How many defects are slipping through and how much does this cost? – tracked
by legacy data learning – ReleasePlanner™
• How many requirements could not be implemented? – tracked by JIRA ‘new
features’
A combination is usually needed to get the best view of the technical debt
to meet the needs of a specific team or organization.

22. 21/10/2014
Slide: 22
Step 2: Continuous monitoring by JIRA Sync
• Issue in JIRA is imported and synchronized in ReleasePlanner

23. 21/10/2014
Slide: 23
Step 3: TD monitoring
and estimation in
ReleasePlanner™

24. 21/10/2014
Slide: 24
Step 4&5: Generate and analyze trade-off
solutions in ReleasePlanner™

25. 21/10/2014
Slide: 25
Step 6: Select, execute and re-iterate
• Release plans in ReleasePlanner are exported to JIRA
for execution

26. 21/10/2014
Slide: 26
Agenda:
• Release planning – What? Why? How?
• Technical debt
• Managing technical debt - An analytic approach
• Tool support
• Case study
• Summary and outlook

27. 21/10/2014
Slide: 27
Take home messages
Release planning balancing between new
features and bug fixes will reduce technical debt (1)
Continuous and customized measurement
are needed to understand TD (2)
Data analytics and scenario-based optimization will
create more transparent and justifiable plans
(3)
Tool support is in place and ready to use to
utilize the best of both worlds. Ask for a trial!
(4)

28. 21/10/2014
Slide: 28

29. 21/10/2014
Slide: 29
29
How to get it started?
• Applicability
• Trial accounts
• Training and consulting
• Demo projects
• Proof of ROI
• Readiness
• Customizable
• Book available









30. 21/10/2014
Slide: 30
Contacts and Questions
• Jason Ho
 Email: jasonh@expertdecisions.com
 Phone: +1 587 891 8822
• Guenther Ruhe
 Email: ruhe@expertdecisions.com
 Phone: +1 403 608 1180
• Website: http://www.expertdecisions.com/

31. 21/10/2014
Slide: 31
Questions?

32. 21/10/2014
Slide: 32
Guenther Ruhe
Jason Ho
Expert Decisions Inc.
ruhe@expertdecisions.com