We've all experienced the tension that occurs between designers, product managers, and engineers during release time. Scope creep is one key culprit, but another one that isn't often talked about amongst teams is when and how to handoff specs, designs, and code. In this presentation, Poornima Vijayashanker, formerly founding engineer at Mint.com, and currently Founder of two startups BizeeBee and Femgineer discusses about: * How to setup a process for handoffs that is flexible. * How to measure the success of the process and refine it over time. * How to coordinate with teams outside of product and engineering in order to meet business goals. About the Speaker Poornima Vijayashanker is a software engineer, entrepreneur, speaker, blogger, and lecturer. After graduating from Duke University with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer science she moved out to Silicon Valley to begin her career as an R&D Engineer. After a couple of years she was lured into startup land. Here first startup was Mint.com, where she was the founding engineer. After Mint's acquisition, she transitioned from being a founding engineer to a founder. Currently she is the CEO & Founder of two startups: BizeeBee and Femgineer, and is spending the fall of 2013 lecturing at Duke University. When she's not running companies and building products she's practicing Bikram yoga, cooking, or traveling around the world. Upcoming Events Reserve your seat for the next AIPMM webinar. Visit: http://aipmm.com/aipmm_webinars/. Want To Certify Your Team? If you have a product team of 10 or more that you want to certify, visit: http://bit.ly/1bzjUYB. About AIPMM The AIPMM is the hub of all things product management. It is where product professionals go for answers. With members in over 65 countries, it is the worldwide certifying body of product team professionals. It is the world's largest professional organization of product managers, brand managers, product marketing managers and other product team professionals who are responsible for guiding their organizations, or clients, through a constantly changing business landscape. AIPMM's certification programs are internationally recognized because they allow product professionals to demonstrate their expertise and provide corporate members an assurance that their product management and marketing teams are operating at a high competency level. Visit http://www.aipmm.com. Call For Speakers: http://bit.ly/1b006vm Subscribe: http://www.aipmm.com/subscribe LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/aipmm Membership: http://www.aipmm.com/join.php Certification: http://aipmm.com/html/certification Articles: http://www.aipmm.com/html/newsletter/article.ph

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Hector Del Castillo:
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6. Today’s Speaker
Moderator:
Hector Del Castillo, CPM, CPMM, PMP
Presenter:
Poornima Vijayashanker
CEO & Founder of BizeeBee, Femgineer
poornima@femgineer.com
@femgineer
www.femgineer.com
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7. The Art of the Handoff
Poornima Vijayashanker

8. Agenda
• Why is handoff important?
• Why it typically fails?
• How it impacts the business?
• What PMs can do to improve the process.
• Baby steps...

9. Product development is changing!

10. Team Dynamics
• Remote teams
• Contractors
• Small scrum teams

11. Work is being done asynchronously.

12. Affects shipping.

13. Additional Factors
• Expectations for uptime have changed
• Continuous integration and deployment

14. What has stayed the same
• Scope creep.
• Resource limitations.

15. What is the role of the PM?

16. Translator.

17. Translating
•
•
Customer requests and feedback into
product features
Product marketing, engineering, and design
speak

18. Alignment.

19. Aligning
• Product roadmap with business goals
• Team growth

20. What typically happens during a handoff?

21. Handoff Hijinks
• Mistake in implementation due to
•
•
interpretation of spec or requirements
Too many bottlenecks due to technology
that is not agnostic e.g cutting and pasting
code
No streamlined process for integration

22. Estimates fail because people don’t factor in
complexity.

23. Different work requires different amounts of
time.

24. People cannot foresee every challenge.

27. Continued pressure from management.

28. Point of no return...
• Scope creep
• Lack of checkpoints
• Poor integration process

29. Process Priorities
•
•
•
•
Understand business goals (limit the
number)
Ship
Flexibility
Deal with scope creep

30. Prioritize Goals
• One Metric That Matters
• Pushback

32. Flexible Process
• Teams grow and shrink
What to do if you shrink?
o What to do if you grow?
o
• Responsibilities change
• Different parts of the learning curve
• Integration

33. How do you handoff?

34. What does design need from
engineering?
Engineering
What does engineering need
from design?
What does product need from
engineering?
What does engineering need
from product?
Is it an actual need?
Is it an actual need?
Design
Product
Can product buy
design time?

35. Handoff
•
•
•
Establish checkpoints
Review work
Infrastructure: test suite, technology used for
integration

36. Measuring Success
• Collect feedback from customers and
•
•
employees
Quarterly postmortems
Use a tracking system
o
Pivotal Tracker, Sprint.ly, Trello, Asana

37. Getting Other Teams Involved
• Meeting types
• Post meeting tasks

38. Not another process change!

39. Baby steps...

40. Some people are unhappy and want to
stay unhappy because they are
comfortable with discomfort

41. Others maybe willing to take a risk.

42. Get buy-in.

43. Make one change.

44. Track its progress.

45. Story of how we cut down our
ship time.

46. Additional Resources
•
•
•
Lean Product Development Course:
accepting applications - February 2014
The Soft Skills You Need to Ship
Software Successfully:
gumroad.com/femgineer
femgineer.com/blog

47. Poornima Vijayashanker
Poornima Vijayashanker is a software engineer, entrepreneur, speaker, blogger,
and lecturer. After graduating from Duke University with degrees in Electrical
Engineering and Computer science she moved out to Silicon Valley to begin her
career as an R&D Engineer. After a couple of years she was lured into startup
land. Here first startup was Mint.com, where she was the founding engineer.
After Mint's acquisition, she transitioned from being a founding engineer to a
founder. Currently she is the CEO & Founder of two startups: BizeeBee and
Femgineer, and is spending the fall of 2013 lecturing at Duke University.
When she's not running companies and building products she's practicing Bikram
yoga, cooking, or traveling around the world.
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48. Q&A
Moderator:
Hector Del Castillo, CPM, CPMM, PMP
Presenter:
Poornima Vijayashanker
CEO & Founder of BizeeBee, Femgineer
poornima@femgineer.com
@femgineer
www.femgineer.com
© AIPMM 2013
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