Agile continuous flow (Kanban) methods aren’t only for Operations and Support anymore -- Product Development teams now use them for strategic, date-sensitive initiatives to achieve faster time to market. Proceed with caution! Simply throwing away timeboxes can be dangerous. We took the journey from a timeboxed to a continuous flow software delivery model. We brought along a large tribe of developers, testers, product owners, dev-ops people, UX designers, and stakeholders. We got lost a few times on the way, but we did find our destination.

1. Think Outside the
(Time) Box
Transitioning from Timeboxes
to Continuous Product Delivery

2. Intro
Stephen Younge works here Steve Stolt works here

3. “Continuous Product
Delivery?”

4. Feature Inventory

5. Continuous delivery? Easy!
Just change everything.
(Well, maybe it isn’t that easy)
Tuesday, August 6 • 3:45pm - 5:00pm • Canal B
Steve Stolt and Steve Neely

6. Learning Objectives
After today's session, you'll be able to:
● decide if continuous product delivery is right
for your team
● create a transition plan based on our
learnings
● deal with the reality of dates
● apply kanban principles to higher levels of
planning and tracking
● engage with stakeholders during the journey

7. About you
● Kanban or Scrum?

8. Agenda
● Where we started from
● Why we changed
● What we changed
● Challenges
● Inspect and Adapt
● Advantages
● Q&A

9. Agenda
● Where we started from
● Why we changed
● What we changed
● Challenges
● Inspect and Adapt
● Advantages
● Q&A

10. Starting Point
May 2010
In business 9+ years
Agile and Scrum from day 1
2 Scrum teams
2 week sprints
8 week releases

11. Stakeholders
● Published roadmap
● Release planning every 8
weeks
● Publish major features
● Everyone plans to those dates
● Monthly product council
meeting

12. Roadmap
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
Initiative
Feature
Initiative
Feature
Initiative
Feature
Initiative
Feature
InitiativeFeature
Initiative
Feature
Initiative
Feature
Initiative
Feature
Feature
Feature
RELEASE RELEASE RELEASE RELEASE RELEASE RELEASE

13. Agenda
● Where we started from
● Why we changed
● What we changed
● Challenges
● Inspect and Adapt
● Advantages
● Q&A

14. Timeboxes - good and bad
● Stakeholder expectations
● Feature finished week 2
● Feature "close" week 7-8
● Feature isn't included in a release

15. Intellectual curiosity
● Intellectual curiosity around kanban and Lean
● Value Stream Mapping
● A3
● Donald Reinertsen
● Desire to inspect and adapt

16. Agreement
Continuous deployment for engineering
Continuous flow for the business (in-part kanban)

17. Agenda
● Where we started from
● Why we changed
● What we changed
● Challenges
● Inspect and Adapt
● Advantages
● Q&A

18. We love change - we move fast
Canceled meetings
Training on kanban and lean
Set up kanban boards
This felt great.............................AT FIRST!

19. Tooling Changes

20. Tooling Changes

21. Delivery team process
Kanban
● manage work in process (WIP) limits
● track story/defect throughput

22. Moving away from dates...

23. Agenda
● Where we started from
● Why we changed
● What we changed
● Challenges
● Inspect and Adapt
● Advantages
● Q&A

24. Role confusion
Scrum Masters?
Product Owners?

25. Lost Routines
Iteration Planning
Release Planning
Retros

26. Estimation
Still needed?
Do we still need to estimate stories?
Do we need to estimate tasks?

27. Interruptions
No timebox
It is always a good time
How about now?

28. Stakeholders
“Where are our dates?”

29. Agenda
● Where we started from
● Why we changed
● What we changed
● Challenges
● Inspect and Adapt
● Advantages
● Q&A

30. Role Changes
Scrum Masters - Full-time Coaches
Removal of roadblocks - Product Owners

31. New team routines
Weekly time booked
● replenish ready queue - if needed
● plan upcoming work - if needed
● retrospectives - always

32. Delivery team features
Features
● planned end dates
● check-ins

33. Feature toggles
Are awesome!
Give you control
● staged rollouts
● A/B testing
● rollback
● market release
● incremental feedback!

34. Feature kanban
● transparency
● self-serve

35. Feature-level Status Reporting

36. How to Align ‘Above’ Features?

37. Objectives

38. Check-ins with Stakeholders
Are we on track?
Do we need to make adjustments?

39. Objectives - delivery team
Objectives
● co-authored by the product and delivery team
● a guidepost for the delivery team
● delivery team - stakeholder alignment

40. Objectives - A few walls help

41. Alignment between Stakeholders and Team
Stakeholders
Team
ObjectivesFeatures
Initiatives Business Goals
Shield
and
Check-ins
Stories
and
Defects

42. Roadmap
Previous
Quarter
Feature
Initiative
Feature
Initiative
Feature
Feature
Initiative
Feature
Initiative
Initiative
Initiative
Feature
Feature
Feature
Recently
Delivered
Current
Quarter
Next
Quarter
Beyond
FEATURES
In
Progress
Prep Ideas

43. Everybody Bought In
Team
● more efficient and
responsive with
continuous delivery
● focus on WIP and
cycle time
Stakeholders
● features out faster
● transparency
● engaged
Alignment on a single set of business objectives
and medium grained features

44. Our New Reality

45. Agenda
● Where we started from
● Why we changed
● What we changed
● Challenges
● Inspect and Adapt
● Advantages
● Q&A

46. Engineering efficiency

47. Small, frequent releases
Less to debug, if needed - good
Not free - bad

48. No More Branches

49. No More Patches

50. The last 5%
If we need another week we can get it
Requires discipline

51. Delivery Teams
prefer continuous delivery
(at least ours seem to)

52. Rapid Response for new features
We plan to have space to respond
Smaller releases = smaller feedback (focused)
Less to respond to - if needed
ASAP

54. We have come far...
... but we’re not done

55. Agenda
● Where we started from
● Why we changed
● What we changed
● Challenges
● Inspect and Adapt
● Advantages
● Q&A

56. QUESTIONS?
Stephen Younge
syounge@rallydev.com
@stephen_younge
Steve Stolt
sstolt@rallydev.com
@stevestolt
or stop by our booth
or our reception on
Tuesday at 7p

58. end