Product Development & Planning Tina’s Introduction I am CHSI’s Product Manager as of Feb of 2019. Cody’s Introduction Intern > QA > ALM Engineer > Scrum Bag Product Dev and Planning – Tina We’re going to touch on the surface level of product planning and development. I’ll focus more on product planning and Cody will focus on product development. By definition, product planning is the process that spans from idea conception to market launch. Of course I’m oversimplifying this because there are a lot of activities that happen in-between like creating a business case, communicating to stakeholders, funding approval, then sign offs, documenting requirements, establishing timelines, etc, etc. To help with this presentation, I Googled images that represent the Product Planning and Development stages and only found 500+ variations. So, why is this? Why isn’t there one right way of doing it? Bottom line is that project planning and development best practices are developed from project success or failure. We develop best practices and key learnings from reflecting on what went well and discussing what we can do better the next time. In Agile, we call this ritual – retrospective. So, if you don’t believe me about how complex this topic can be, take a look at one visual representation…

We’re not going to walk through this workflow because Cody and I will be simplifying this for you… In my opinion, Product Ownership is an evolving role in the tech industry and the methods used to manage product evolution is still shifting. Not all of the activities defined in delivery methods are a one-size fits all. This is why strategies for product management and development vary so greatly.

Waterfall vs. Agile Development Methodologies – Tina Waterfall was the standard methodology for software development. We use a hybrid of waterfall and agile depending on the project. Follows a structured process flow that starts with  Discovery – document business requirements, business case, vision, etc (plan and analysis phase) Design – technical and UI/UX design solutions (architects and designers do their part) Develop – coding and testing Test – check with client and make corrections, then retest Finally Deploy Not ideal because it can result in rework, and late on key learnings,. By the time we deliver, we have to ask if anyone even wants this product anymore and is it working the way we visualized?   We don’t get to learn and iterate this until after the product is launched maybe 1-2 years later.  Good luck getting funding approved in Phase II - it’s going to take another year before you start realizing benefits. Agile - Cody Framework (methodology) is the new industry standard. Agile still follows the similar process flow as waterfall, but this new methodology provides agility. Development cycle occurs frequently (2 week sprints / 2 week development cycles / frequency could result in daily releases for some companies) Discover/Plan Design Develop Test  Deploy Results in accelerated learning “fail fast” “learn fast” concept.   Allows us to learn, launch, and iterate quickly to evolve product offerings. We don’t have to wait until the “grand finale” product launch to know if we hit the mark. Through the development process we’re leveraging industry experts and stakeholders to provide feedback, and to assist with testing.

Moral of the story… Just to prove our point – here are some memes that prove you should not go chasing waterfalls.

Agile Scrum Framework at a glace (review slide) – Cody How does all of this come together if we’re just working on small pieces of the puzzle? - Tina I’m sure you’ve heard someone say “that’s on our backlog.”   Misconception is that everything will go into the backlog, and this is wrong. Most things go in, only some come out. Like a gladiator battle. Only ideas that align with our product vision will exist in the backlog. We develop a Product Roadmap that prioritizes projects over 1- 3 years. The first thing is understanding the problems that need to be solved for our internal and external stakeholders. Project prioritization is often managed with an agile methodology in that it continues to be iterated based on industry demands, scalability, and unique selling points. You can probably imagine how many development requests that CHSI receives because of unique internal processes with how you run your business. When deciding what features to prioritize we look at a number of factors: Will the feature be beneficial to the majority of our users? Is the feature offering aligned with our strategic initiatives and can we measure success based on specific (predefined KPIs)? Does the feature present unique selling points that give us a competitive advantage? Can we make money on a new product offering? Market scalability In other words, if we build too many custom features for individual clients that aren’t beneficial to anyone else, we limit our growth potential. Sometimes we have to do the hard job of saying “No” or “Not right now.” Source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/billheys/2011/01/18/branching-for-scrum/

KANBAN – Cody Explain Kanban Takes into consideration…  Team velocity (experience and participation), and effort for planned work. Unplanned bug fixes and on-going maintenance (KANBAN, priority items first, everything else after). Product Planning - Tina It’s important for our internal and external stakeholders to understand and respect these processes as they also involve paid work orders and CHSI project priorities. I hope this was helpful.

Questions These are some notes cause youre gonna have to answer some questions, so get ready to wing it and not make us look bad