Prioritize Your Backlog! Great Advice… John Heintz Founder, Gist Labs Senior Consultant, Cutter 1

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC About John Heintz Developer since 1995 Agilist since 1999 Founded Gist Labs in 2008 Developer, Mentor, Consultant Intuitive, Abstract, Precise 2 Kool-Aids I’ve drank: Agile/Lean/Kanban, OO, TDD, REST, Mentoring, Craftsmanship, Emergent/Progressive Design, InnovationGames®, Systems and Complexity Theory

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Ground Rules Law of Two Feet: Quietly leave if you think your time would be better spent elsewhere Interrupt me with Questions 3

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Agile is great!! But… Agile alone isn’t everything you need 4

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Agile is great!! But… Agile alone isn’t everything you need 5

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Vapid “lacking liveliness, tang, briskness, or force” Merriam-Webster 6

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Huh? “a nice sounding goal… that conveys no advice” me No clear how, or why 7

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC think desert mirage… 8

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Let’s think of some examples… 9

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Prioritize Your Backlog! 10

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Retrospect! 11

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Collaborate with your customers! 12

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC 13 All of these: Really Good Ideas You absolutely should be doing these Most Agile classes, texts, experts say so

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC And Yet… There is very little actual advice for how to do these things 14

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC My Conclusion is Agile is great Some parts of Agile are only the hint of advice for how to actually do something You must fill in those gaps when it’s important for you business/project/team 15

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC How I Judge Tools… 16

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC 17 Concrete Reflective Tools Tools which are immediately useful, generate feedback from their use, and are backed by their own guiding principles.

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Concrete! 18

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC not Abstract This is “House in abstract landscape” by Franz Mark You saw that, right? 19

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Hi, my name is John. I’m an INTJ 20

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. 21

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Myers-Briggs Dichotomies Extraversion (E) - (I) Introversion Sensing (S) -(N) Intuition Thinking (T) - (F) Feeling Judgment (J) - (P) Perception 22

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC 23 Sensing and intuition describe how new information is understood and interpreted.

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC 24 Individuals who prefer sensing are more likely to trust information that is in the present, tangible and concrete: that is, information that can be understood by the five senses.

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC 25 Those who prefer intuition tend to trust information that is more abstract or theoretical, that can be associated with other information

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC 26 Here's the kicker: it's not an even distribution. S-vs-N 73.2% is S, 26.8% is N You can easily lose over half your audience

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Prioritize Your Backlog! 27

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC What is the Agile advice? Prioritize your backlog based on customer value 28

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Prioritize Your Backlog! How do we measure customer value? What about other stakeholders? 29

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Prioritize Your Backlog! We need more that just mandate to do something, even if it’s a good idea. This mandate is vapid, without substance 30

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value 31

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value 1. Know a lot about your customers and solution 2. Keep your risks smaller than the total value of the solution 3. Grow customer value 4. GOTO 1 32

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Validated Knowledge Don’t just pretend to know something “By what evidence …” 33

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Priority is a Function Priority decisions for backlog items should be based on the current values of Knowledge Risk Customer Value Effort estimates 34

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC What goes in the Backlog? Everything Features/Stories, Chores, Investigations, Interviews, Training, Conferences,…. All demands of team capacity Most (>50%) should be customer value 35

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Moving the K/R/CV Dials Clearly “User Stories” should increase Customer Value for the project What about some other examples? 36

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Find a Buddy! Pair up for discussion 37

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Quiz Which of Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value are changed by: UX Prototypes 38

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Quiz Which of Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value are changed by: A/B Testing with partial rollout 39

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Quiz Which of Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value are changed by: Upgrading a Database (to latest) 40

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Quiz Which of Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value are changed by: Technical Debt Reduction 41

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Quiz Which of Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value are changed by: Send Team to User Conference 42

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Game Let’s play a game… Pair, pair up (need group of 4) 43

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Game Pick one to be the note taker The other three are players 44

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Game Rules for the note taker PLEASE ONLY NOTE TAKER READ 45

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Game You are the silent “observer” Take notes on Why someone feels the way they do Listen for motivation Collaborations and trades “so that …” “in order to…” 46

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Game Goal: Your team must fill in this sentence: “We want to order ______ for our main meal, and _____ for our dessert.” Choose from: American, Italian, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Thai 47

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Choice Modeling We just played a “game” based on the phycology of choice modeling 48

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Rules for Observer These are the rules given to the observers: Take notes on Why someone feels the way they do Listen for motivation Collaborations and trades “so that …” “in order to…” 49

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Did you learn about each others preferences? 50

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Would you have learned as much by just asking individuals? 51

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Now, imagine playing this customers or stakeholders… 52

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Buy a Feature 53

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Buy a Feature Innovation Games® Collaborative Choice Modeling Market Research Limited money, work together to buy Output: game results, dialog/decisions, sense of buy-in, knowledge, … 54

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Let’s Wrap Up 55

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC 56 Concrete Reflective Tools Tools which are immediately useful, generate feedback from their use, and are backed by their own guiding principles.

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value 57

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC Buy a Feature 58

Prioritize Your Backlog! Great Advice… John Heintz Founder, Gist Labs Senior Consultant, Cutter 59