How we run our agile dev process using only Trello and Google Docs(uservoice.com)
uservoice.com
How we run our agile dev process using only Trello and Google Docs
http://www.uservoice.com/blog/founders/trello-google-docs-product-management/
55 comments
Yeah I pretty much echo this experience. The ironic part is how almost every "Agile" company I've ever seen seems to completely reverse the very first line of the manifesto.
> Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
For my part, I'm completely done with Agile and the Agile community, there is very little of value there any more. Those who did add value have moved on, tired of and pushed out by those looking to make a quick buck consulting or managers looking to justify their poor management skills. It's quite sad.
I'm on a small team now, doing something fun and cool. The process is leaner, faster, way more productive and without all the BS overhead of trying to be "Agile".
> Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
For my part, I'm completely done with Agile and the Agile community, there is very little of value there any more. Those who did add value have moved on, tired of and pushed out by those looking to make a quick buck consulting or managers looking to justify their poor management skills. It's quite sad.
I'm on a small team now, doing something fun and cool. The process is leaner, faster, way more productive and without all the BS overhead of trying to be "Agile".
For my part, I'm completely done with Agile and the Agile community, there is very little of value there any more
I don't think it's quite that bad myself, but I think it depends which bits of "the community" you find yourself in. There are still smart folk who do actually pay attention to the manifesto and don't wander around applying an "agile" label to everything around them and carrying on as before ;-)
I don't think it's quite that bad myself, but I think it depends which bits of "the community" you find yourself in. There are still smart folk who do actually pay attention to the manifesto and don't wander around applying an "agile" label to everything around them and carrying on as before ;-)
I wrote a blog post last week that echos this sentiment. Funny how (many) people who (and tools that) espouse agile actually fail the first tenet of the agile manifesto.... (not meant as a plug but for those interested in reading .... http://www.thetaboard.com/blog/why-im-haking-thetaboard?r=37...)
[deleted]
Respect!
We just turned every other 'project management' app off but Trello (goals/tasks/bugs/feedback) & Beanstalk (repo);
We just turned every other 'project management' app off but Trello (goals/tasks/bugs/feedback) & Beanstalk (repo);
Very cool!
I assume you've tried Pivotal Tracker at some point too? I'd be interested to know what you like/dislike about your new workflow compared to Pivotal.
I assume you've tried Pivotal Tracker at some point too? I'd be interested to know what you like/dislike about your new workflow compared to Pivotal.
It's been a long time since I checked out Pivotal so I don't feel that confident in giving too much of an opinion.
However my main gripe with Pivotal was always two things: 1) Strict adherence to a Scrum methodology (forcing me to use a certain set of columns, etc) and 2) The UI. It frankly drove me nuts. The small text fields, small text areas and lack of wiki-style formatting. Anything longer than a few words was impossible to grok.
We flirted with trying it out about the time we adopted Trello but enough people had bad past experiences, like mine, that we never gave it a try.
However my main gripe with Pivotal was always two things: 1) Strict adherence to a Scrum methodology (forcing me to use a certain set of columns, etc) and 2) The UI. It frankly drove me nuts. The small text fields, small text areas and lack of wiki-style formatting. Anything longer than a few words was impossible to grok.
We flirted with trying it out about the time we adopted Trello but enough people had bad past experiences, like mine, that we never gave it a try.
Yeah I hear you. We use Pivotal for a few projects and my top two complaints are the same as yours, although they've made some improvements in the last few months. OTOH there are things that bother me about the Trello UI as well.
Thanks for replying!
Thanks for replying!
I'm curious about their thoughts on Pivotal as well.
In addition, how do you track velocity?
In addition, how do you track velocity?
In addition, how do you track velocity?
From the description it doesn't look like they're running in sprints, but deploying as stories get completed, so cycle time would be the thing they would track. No idea if Trello can do this out of the box. They also explicitly said that they're not doing project estimates - so they wouldn't need to track velocity in any case.
If it were me I might be interested in visualising the flow somewhere - more of a tool to help spot problems as to make estimates any more accurate - but I'm a fan of just doing that with a whiteboard as part of running the project.
From the description it doesn't look like they're running in sprints, but deploying as stories get completed, so cycle time would be the thing they would track. No idea if Trello can do this out of the box. They also explicitly said that they're not doing project estimates - so they wouldn't need to track velocity in any case.
If it were me I might be interested in visualising the flow somewhere - more of a tool to help spot problems as to make estimates any more accurate - but I'm a fan of just doing that with a whiteboard as part of running the project.
The interesting part (or scary part if you ask me) in all this workflows and meetings there is no space for software design specification and code review.
You wouldn't see them on my board either - for a few reasons (hopefully none of them scary :-)
* We view design as an ongoing and continual process - not a phase. Having a "software design phase" just wouldn't make sense for us since it basically covers the whole cycle from when the idea comes out to when it hits the streets.
* We generally pair on development where at all possible, and when we are pairing we don't find that we get a great deal of additional value out of code reviews on top.
* When we don't pair for whatever reason we do code reviews, but do them on a regular cadence rather than as a phase (say every Wednesday afternoon). A bunch of stuff fits in this kind of pattern. We are sure to talk to users every couple of weeks. We do some usability testing every couple of weeks. It's not related to how stories flow so it's not on the board.
* We view design as an ongoing and continual process - not a phase. Having a "software design phase" just wouldn't make sense for us since it basically covers the whole cycle from when the idea comes out to when it hits the streets.
* We generally pair on development where at all possible, and when we are pairing we don't find that we get a great deal of additional value out of code reviews on top.
* When we don't pair for whatever reason we do code reviews, but do them on a regular cadence rather than as a phase (say every Wednesday afternoon). A bunch of stuff fits in this kind of pattern. We are sure to talk to users every couple of weeks. We do some usability testing every couple of weeks. It's not related to how stories flow so it's not on the board.
The reason to have a dedicated "software design phase" is to encourage invention of "nobody can do it but us" - secret sauces which can make you (or your company) super rich (i.e., algorithms in Oracle Database, Google's algorithms, etc.). These things cannot be invented as "ongoing and continual process".
I know that my examples are based on system software development, but I have no reason to believe they cannot be applied also for web development.
I know that my examples are based on system software development, but I have no reason to believe they cannot be applied also for web development.
That's more R&D than part of the day-to-day engineering process, though.
Anything that's going to be secret sauce is going to need a lot of prototyping and experimentation, and might not even yield usable results. Oftentimes, it isn't even possible to make an estimate as to the complexity of what it is you are building -- all you can do is timebox it.
Mixing that in with normal day-to-day development feels, to my brain, like mixing concerns.
Once those prototypes and experiments start to produce tangible benefits, then incorporating them just becomes another story in the sprint.
Anything that's going to be secret sauce is going to need a lot of prototyping and experimentation, and might not even yield usable results. Oftentimes, it isn't even possible to make an estimate as to the complexity of what it is you are building -- all you can do is timebox it.
Mixing that in with normal day-to-day development feels, to my brain, like mixing concerns.
Once those prototypes and experiments start to produce tangible benefits, then incorporating them just becomes another story in the sprint.
There are two kinds of innovations: "initial" and "incremental" innovation. What you just described is "initial" innovation (some people also call it "radical innovation"). And the process you described, I think it is called "skunk work" (prototypes and experiments) which is only one way to achieve "initial" innovation.
I think that "incremental" innovations are very important for companies and sometimes a "incremental" innovation can end up being a "radical" innovation.
I think that "incremental" innovations are very important for companies and sometimes a "incremental" innovation can end up being a "radical" innovation.
The reason to have a dedicated "software design phase" is to encourage invention of "nobody can do it but us" - secret sauces which can make you (or your company) super rich (i.e., algorithms in Oracle Database, Google's algorithms, etc.). These things cannot be invented as "ongoing and continual process".
That doesn't match my experience - and I'm not sure I understand the logic. Why would these algorithms be impossible to development during an incremental process?
From my perspective having a continual software design process, rather than a phased approach, gives me more opportunities for innovative design - not less. We end up doing more software design work that way, since we have the opportunity to add "secret sauce" all of the time - rather than just in some one-off section.
I find I get more innovation out of teams that develop incrementally. That is, to quite a large extent, why we develop that way.
That doesn't match my experience - and I'm not sure I understand the logic. Why would these algorithms be impossible to development during an incremental process?
From my perspective having a continual software design process, rather than a phased approach, gives me more opportunities for innovative design - not less. We end up doing more software design work that way, since we have the opportunity to add "secret sauce" all of the time - rather than just in some one-off section.
I find I get more innovation out of teams that develop incrementally. That is, to quite a large extent, why we develop that way.
"We view design as an ongoing and continual process - not a phase." - Boom! Wish I could do more than just one vote up.
How big of a team / project could be managed reasonably with this process?
Agile teams are 5-7 people.
Perhaps you mean how many people in total? I've seen lightweight systems like this scale out to 150+ developers. (Insert discussion here about Agile Program Management)
You really don't need a lot. Most enterprise project management systems are over-engineered by a couple orders of magnitude. (And they hurt much more than they help)
Perhaps you mean how many people in total? I've seen lightweight systems like this scale out to 150+ developers. (Insert discussion here about Agile Program Management)
You really don't need a lot. Most enterprise project management systems are over-engineered by a couple orders of magnitude. (And they hurt much more than they help)
My expectation would be that you would still have one central PM and Planning board but you'd have a separate Current Development board for each team (i.e. different teams for different components/modules).
Yep, that's pretty close. There are some considerations with teams-of-teams. Infrastructure, suppliers, scheduling, production support, release procedures, etc. There is also a bit of organization and dynamic scaling necessary: you don't want a program backlog with 4 thousand items on it. That's unworkable.
Usually it helps if you stay with fixed iterations instead of Kanban and do program planning all at once (Yes, 150 people all in the same room working out the next couple of sprints. Fun to watch and participate in!)
Other kinds of tooling issues become bigger in a large group, like how to integrate separate physical pieces, how many branches to have in your CM tool, how technical drawings will be cataloged, etc. But none of it is super hard, and lots of other folks have already gone down this road. The important thing is not to over-constrain your development environment just to make yourself feel safer.
The biggest obstacle to running a larger group like this is dealing with the parts that are counter-intuitive. It just seems natural with 100 folks that you'd have a detailed charge-code breakdown, for instance. Or that 100% capacity is something you want to achieve. There are a few more gotchas like this, but if people are open-minded, it can mean a huge increase both in performance and happiness.
The industry is moving towards plain kanban without the sprints. I like this idea with smaller groups, especially groups with lots of support work on existing code, but for larger projects creating something new, using sprints, having a fixed point of coordination for a lot of different stuff, works much better.
Note I didn't say you couldn't go total kanban at large scale, just that there was a trade-off involved with each path.
Usually it helps if you stay with fixed iterations instead of Kanban and do program planning all at once (Yes, 150 people all in the same room working out the next couple of sprints. Fun to watch and participate in!)
Other kinds of tooling issues become bigger in a large group, like how to integrate separate physical pieces, how many branches to have in your CM tool, how technical drawings will be cataloged, etc. But none of it is super hard, and lots of other folks have already gone down this road. The important thing is not to over-constrain your development environment just to make yourself feel safer.
The biggest obstacle to running a larger group like this is dealing with the parts that are counter-intuitive. It just seems natural with 100 folks that you'd have a detailed charge-code breakdown, for instance. Or that 100% capacity is something you want to achieve. There are a few more gotchas like this, but if people are open-minded, it can mean a huge increase both in performance and happiness.
The industry is moving towards plain kanban without the sprints. I like this idea with smaller groups, especially groups with lots of support work on existing code, but for larger projects creating something new, using sprints, having a fixed point of coordination for a lot of different stuff, works much better.
Note I didn't say you couldn't go total kanban at large scale, just that there was a trade-off involved with each path.
The industry is moving towards plain kanban without the sprints. I like this idea with smaller groups, especially groups with lots of support work on existing code, but for larger projects creating something new, using sprints, having a fixed point of coordination for a lot of different stuff, works much better.
I mostly don't work with organisations of that size, but the technique I hear people use to get around that coordination issue is to have events that happen on a regular cadence, but don't have them tied to delivery in the same way sprints are.
So you have stories flowing but also schedule fortnightly planning meetings (or whatever) on top.
This fits with my experiences on smaller kanban style projects where we have regular cadences for non-flow things like usability testing, backlog grooming, etc.
[Edit: Which is what the OP folk are doing "The ideas on this board are reviewed once a week during our Inbox Review meeting"]
I mostly don't work with organisations of that size, but the technique I hear people use to get around that coordination issue is to have events that happen on a regular cadence, but don't have them tied to delivery in the same way sprints are.
So you have stories flowing but also schedule fortnightly planning meetings (or whatever) on top.
This fits with my experiences on smaller kanban style projects where we have regular cadences for non-flow things like usability testing, backlog grooming, etc.
[Edit: Which is what the OP folk are doing "The ideas on this board are reviewed once a week during our Inbox Review meeting"]
It's worth noting that when we were in our last "building a big new product" push over a year (for our Helpdesk product) we were doing sprints because we had harder deadlines to work within. Having said that we still hated the overhead required to properly plan a sprint so even if we were in that phase again I'm not sure that we'd go back to sprints.
Yep, that's how to do it. You can have certainly have cadences without sprints.
The interesting thing here is that the same problem arises at a larger scale as it does on at the team level: architecture. Not how pieces of the software is put together, but the architecture of the existing and future business environment.
So, for example, a large project might include hardware, software, embedded software, offshore testing, multiple vendors, fixed demo dates, fixed regulatory dates, and so on. You can certainly manage all these cadences separately, but for most folks sprints of a week or two in length give you fixed reference points to then optimize around.
Of course, it's easy to think up a scenario with a pretty simple business environment, say the next version of Google+. In that case, Kanban probably would work a lot better. Do the simplest thing you can, but no simpler.
I find that business architectural issues can be difficult for the teams to grasp. The Scrum guys have preached sliding stories under the door to the team for so long, there's an entrenched mindset that things like that aren't the team's problem. (Not everybody, but many folks think this)
Counter-intuitively, by fixing the planning and delivery times, you can simply the cadence discussion. It all has to fit somehow in this list of dates. It also makes it easier to simplify or add complexity to the business architecture without having to worry so much about impacts.
You might think: why not just go kanban with one fixed planning cadence? Kind of the best of both worlds. Technically this would be awesome. You run into some communication and messaging problems though. If your message is "It's kind of like Scrum only bigger" then you can send out for Scrum training and explain how it all works. People will take the training and then ask questions like "who is the product owner" which aren't perfect but at least they're in the right direction. But if all you have is a bunch of boards and hand-waving, it's very difficult to get everybody to have some kind of mental model on what's happening. It's just too much (unless you already have established some previous Agile practice). Folks have to have some sort of working mental model of how things are supposed to work. Going from something like RUP to full-bore program-level Kanban in a complex business environment is just too far. My opinion only, for what it's worth. Perhaps in the next few years we'll see people tackle this. One of the things we don't talk about enough is that we struggle quite a bit with teams doing Agile, much less programs. It's simple concepts, but application is a bear.
The interesting thing here is that the same problem arises at a larger scale as it does on at the team level: architecture. Not how pieces of the software is put together, but the architecture of the existing and future business environment.
So, for example, a large project might include hardware, software, embedded software, offshore testing, multiple vendors, fixed demo dates, fixed regulatory dates, and so on. You can certainly manage all these cadences separately, but for most folks sprints of a week or two in length give you fixed reference points to then optimize around.
Of course, it's easy to think up a scenario with a pretty simple business environment, say the next version of Google+. In that case, Kanban probably would work a lot better. Do the simplest thing you can, but no simpler.
I find that business architectural issues can be difficult for the teams to grasp. The Scrum guys have preached sliding stories under the door to the team for so long, there's an entrenched mindset that things like that aren't the team's problem. (Not everybody, but many folks think this)
Counter-intuitively, by fixing the planning and delivery times, you can simply the cadence discussion. It all has to fit somehow in this list of dates. It also makes it easier to simplify or add complexity to the business architecture without having to worry so much about impacts.
You might think: why not just go kanban with one fixed planning cadence? Kind of the best of both worlds. Technically this would be awesome. You run into some communication and messaging problems though. If your message is "It's kind of like Scrum only bigger" then you can send out for Scrum training and explain how it all works. People will take the training and then ask questions like "who is the product owner" which aren't perfect but at least they're in the right direction. But if all you have is a bunch of boards and hand-waving, it's very difficult to get everybody to have some kind of mental model on what's happening. It's just too much (unless you already have established some previous Agile practice). Folks have to have some sort of working mental model of how things are supposed to work. Going from something like RUP to full-bore program-level Kanban in a complex business environment is just too far. My opinion only, for what it's worth. Perhaps in the next few years we'll see people tackle this. One of the things we don't talk about enough is that we struggle quite a bit with teams doing Agile, much less programs. It's simple concepts, but application is a bear.
You can certainly manage all these cadences separately, but for most folks sprints of a week or two in length give you fixed reference points to then optimize around.
Curiously what I've been hearing from folk in this situation is that it's the separation of the cadences that they see as an advantage. With the large teams they were finding there was just "too much stuff" happening at a single point and it became impossible to manage. Moving to a kanban style, and moving the various end-of-sprint rituals and spreading them out into their own cadences helped enormously - but I would imagine that it would be very context dependent.
The other thing I find useful about the kanban style is when the cadences of some work doesn't match up well with the sprint cadence. For example the more generative UX work (user interviews, etc.) doesn't always naturally fit into that 1/2 week cycle. Sprint-ahead/-behind is an abomination in my eyes - so having separate cadences helps a lot there.
Going from something like RUP to full-bore program-level Kanban in a complex business environment is just too far
Heh. With RUP you can probably find enough things in method composer to evolve it into something kanban-ish ;-)
Personally I'm not a fan of the big-bang rollout of new processes. Never seems to work well. And having folks who can actually understand "It's kind of like Scrum only bigger" means you've already got folk with a fairly sophisticated knowledge (assuming that they actually understand Scrum that is...)
One of the things we don't talk about enough is that we struggle quite a bit with teams doing Agile, much less programs. It's simple concepts, but application is a bear.
Seems that it's pretty much all I talk about - probably why I keep getting sucked into coaching roles away from more fun thing :-)
Curiously what I've been hearing from folk in this situation is that it's the separation of the cadences that they see as an advantage. With the large teams they were finding there was just "too much stuff" happening at a single point and it became impossible to manage. Moving to a kanban style, and moving the various end-of-sprint rituals and spreading them out into their own cadences helped enormously - but I would imagine that it would be very context dependent.
The other thing I find useful about the kanban style is when the cadences of some work doesn't match up well with the sprint cadence. For example the more generative UX work (user interviews, etc.) doesn't always naturally fit into that 1/2 week cycle. Sprint-ahead/-behind is an abomination in my eyes - so having separate cadences helps a lot there.
Going from something like RUP to full-bore program-level Kanban in a complex business environment is just too far
Heh. With RUP you can probably find enough things in method composer to evolve it into something kanban-ish ;-)
Personally I'm not a fan of the big-bang rollout of new processes. Never seems to work well. And having folks who can actually understand "It's kind of like Scrum only bigger" means you've already got folk with a fairly sophisticated knowledge (assuming that they actually understand Scrum that is...)
One of the things we don't talk about enough is that we struggle quite a bit with teams doing Agile, much less programs. It's simple concepts, but application is a bear.
Seems that it's pretty much all I talk about - probably why I keep getting sucked into coaching roles away from more fun thing :-)
We reach a point of dimishing returns really quickly just talking about situations. I can share experiences and what I think I know, but at the end of the day this isn't about going off and following some author, speaker, or book. It's figuring out what works in your particular situation.
The cool part about Agile is that it's not Scrum, ie, there is no certification authority or magic recipe. It's just a bunch of schmucks sharing what worked or didn't work.
I shy away from answers like "it's all Scrum" or "It's all Kanban" for just that reason -- too facile. In a 15-project program, you usually have several groups going strictly Kanban. Enterprise architecture is one (if you have that) and program release is another. These things don't have to sync up, they just need to be ready. So even my advice about using sprints isn't absolute. Advice in this area is a lot of generalizations. You get what you pay for!
If you have any experience with these larger structures, I'd love to hear about it. I'm always collecting tidbits like that. Thanks for the chat!
The cool part about Agile is that it's not Scrum, ie, there is no certification authority or magic recipe. It's just a bunch of schmucks sharing what worked or didn't work.
I shy away from answers like "it's all Scrum" or "It's all Kanban" for just that reason -- too facile. In a 15-project program, you usually have several groups going strictly Kanban. Enterprise architecture is one (if you have that) and program release is another. These things don't have to sync up, they just need to be ready. So even my advice about using sprints isn't absolute. Advice in this area is a lot of generalizations. You get what you pay for!
If you have any experience with these larger structures, I'd love to hear about it. I'm always collecting tidbits like that. Thanks for the chat!
I can share experiences and what I think I know, but at the end of the day this isn't about going off and following some author, speaker, or book. It's figuring out what works in your particular situation
Likewise and ditto. As I said I would imagine that it would be very context dependent.
Likewise and ditto. As I said I would imagine that it would be very context dependent.
> Don’t have a separate system for bugs
This is very interesting. We also use Google Docs for stories/specs and Trello for prioritization and roadmap. However, we maintain a separate bug tracker (Open Atrium) for our enterprise clients to report bugs. We'd also love to have a single prioritization list. Wish there was an ability to create a Trello list sync'd with RSS Feed from Open Atrium.
> It’s the product development version of the Hunger Games
:)
This is very interesting. We also use Google Docs for stories/specs and Trello for prioritization and roadmap. However, we maintain a separate bug tracker (Open Atrium) for our enterprise clients to report bugs. We'd also love to have a single prioritization list. Wish there was an ability to create a Trello list sync'd with RSS Feed from Open Atrium.
> It’s the product development version of the Hunger Games
:)
Ah, it's worth clarification here. Here's how we use the nomenclature:
Ticket - a message a customer sends in about an issue or question.
Bug - an issue (that can come from any source) which we track and resolve.
We just Trello for bugs (which may be reported in tickets) but we use UserVoice Helpdesk (http://www.uservoice.com/helpdesk) for tickets. Helpdesk is designed around customer communication, Trello is designed around development.
Hope that clarifies! :)
Ticket - a message a customer sends in about an issue or question.
Bug - an issue (that can come from any source) which we track and resolve.
We just Trello for bugs (which may be reported in tickets) but we use UserVoice Helpdesk (http://www.uservoice.com/helpdesk) for tickets. Helpdesk is designed around customer communication, Trello is designed around development.
Hope that clarifies! :)
Great post and just the right level of detail too. Thanks for taking the time to write this up. We're just about to encounter this problem with our own startup (http://www.staffsquared.com) and my head of ops has been on my back for weeks about how we're going to handle our roadmap for the product vs. bug fixes vs. user feedback.
One point I would make as a brand new start up - I'm not sure how willing/able I'd be to handle the uncertainty of not forcing my dev team to tell me the number of hours a fix/feature will take to implement. I say this because sometimes our road map will include a feature request that upon receiving an estimate for I then decide not to proceed with as the cost/benefit ratio doesn't add up. When this happens I de prioritise the task and put it in a backlog. Having said that, we're at the stage where every second counts; perhaps when we've got a steady stream of income I'll be less picky.
One point I would make as a brand new start up - I'm not sure how willing/able I'd be to handle the uncertainty of not forcing my dev team to tell me the number of hours a fix/feature will take to implement. I say this because sometimes our road map will include a feature request that upon receiving an estimate for I then decide not to proceed with as the cost/benefit ratio doesn't add up. When this happens I de prioritise the task and put it in a backlog. Having said that, we're at the stage where every second counts; perhaps when we've got a steady stream of income I'll be less picky.
How have you trained your customers to NOT expect estimates? What's your model for billing and managing budget, strictly Time and Materials, or do you valuate the Planned Deliverables?
Many thanks for a thought-provoking, and wonderfully complete, post.
Many thanks for a thought-provoking, and wonderfully complete, post.
How have you trained your customers to NOT expect estimates?
If you try this sort of thing yourself what you'll often find is that you can get the cycle time of stories (the time from the story going on the board, to the time it gets deployed) to be fairly constant. It can take some work to get top this point, but it's possible and useful in almost all circumstances.
Once you get to this point you can pretty confidently predict that stories are 1week/1month/2months away from getting deployed - and you can use this as the basis you base customer estimates on.
Arlo Belshee coined this style and called it "Disney Line" planning (y'know - like the one-hour wait from this point thing). Arlo has a great video on this sort of approach to planning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t4bZtnnQJA that might be worth a watch.
If you try this sort of thing yourself what you'll often find is that you can get the cycle time of stories (the time from the story going on the board, to the time it gets deployed) to be fairly constant. It can take some work to get top this point, but it's possible and useful in almost all circumstances.
Once you get to this point you can pretty confidently predict that stories are 1week/1month/2months away from getting deployed - and you can use this as the basis you base customer estimates on.
Arlo Belshee coined this style and called it "Disney Line" planning (y'know - like the one-hour wait from this point thing). Arlo has a great video on this sort of approach to planning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t4bZtnnQJA that might be worth a watch.
A PM can often estimate delivery timetables by analyzing historical lead time. For example, if it normally takes 10 days for a 2-star card to move from Next Up to LaunchPad, then you can guess when it will get shipped. Pad it a little, and make sure you give yourself time to get it IN to the next up column, and you're good.
I was wondering if you had some compelling (magical?) communication that shifted your clients attitudes, but you're basically guesstimating based on past performance.
I didn't see where a star rating equated to effort. I'll look again.
Thanks!
I didn't see where a star rating equated to effort. I'll look again.
Thanks!
Just to expand on what Rich said: we try to build products that solve people's problems. We're very focused on making sure additional features solve a lot of people's problems (our feedback forum helps us figure this out: feedback.uservoice.com/forums/1-general-feedback), not just single clients (even if they have a lot of money). It's a lesson we've learned (painfully) several times. So we tend to make our own schedule and try to delight customers with the things we add, rather than rush to keep up with things potential customers have on their shopping list.
We're a SaaS business so I don't think there's much we need to do here. We launch/promote something only when it's ready. The only deadlines we operate on are internal (ex: we need feature X in time for event B).
How many would like to be doing something like this but cannot have customer or product data in third party/"cloud" storage?
Is there anything like Trello that can be run in-house?
Is there anything like Trello that can be run in-house?
A whiteboard and a big pack of colored sticky notes works for this. It might sound simplistic, but it's surprising effective. It's difficult to ignore the big board if you hang it in a public area of the office. Pretty shallow learning curve also helps.
I actually think if you're trying to get people to buy in to a methodology such as this, it's easier to start with a physical board and progress to something like Trello. One step at a time.
I actually think if you're trying to get people to buy in to a methodology such as this, it's easier to start with a physical board and progress to something like Trello. One step at a time.
It's difficult to ignore the big board if you hang it in a public area of the office
If I have more than one up-vote to give... this would get it. I find people really underestimate the value of a physical board setup. I agree that it's a vastly better starting point than online tools for most teams if they're in the same location.
If I have more than one up-vote to give... this would get it. I find people really underestimate the value of a physical board setup. I agree that it's a vastly better starting point than online tools for most teams if they're in the same location.
We've been using Pivotal, but are about to switch over to Jira completely. Tried Trello. At end of day Trello and Pivotal are lacking 2 key features we need for better predictability in scrum, particularly on enterprise software with many projects: tasks with t-shirt/time estimates, and burndown charts. Without these, the PM team has a hard time estimating a few months out what is possible.
If you're not getting a pretty constant velocity (if you're going the sprint route) or cycle time (the kanban/flow route) then no tool is going to make that happen.
I confidently predict that if Pivotal is not helping you now, Jira will not help you in the future. What needs to change is how the team works, or maybe management's expectations of the team. Not the tool.
I confidently predict that if Pivotal is not helping you now, Jira will not help you in the future. What needs to change is how the team works, or maybe management's expectations of the team. Not the tool.
agree.. technically the velocity should be constant and more or less is.. but the story estimates still establish the building blocks for this.. a story seems to need tasks and task estimates to make the overall story estimate more accurate. Tasks help to break up activities. alternative is to groom the story of course, then you're left with a larger list of stories to manage however, and taking care of that in turn eats into our PM team's velocity :)
It sounds like your spending a lot of effort on estimating. I'd guess (I'm not there so probably incorrectly :-) that you've got some combination of:
a) stories being too big
b) stories having to much variation in size
c) doing time based estimation rather that relative estimates or story counting.
a) stories being too big
b) stories having to much variation in size
c) doing time based estimation rather that relative estimates or story counting.
They are supposed to have a hard time estimating a few months out.
Predicting the future is hard.
Predicting the future is hard.
What happens to the cards on the Inbox board during the Inbox review meeting? I assume some are moved onto the planning board, others onto the bugs board.
But what about a feature request from a customer that you don't plan on implementing in the next 3 quarters? Do you just delete those cards, or move them to some other backlog.
But what about a feature request from a customer that you don't plan on implementing in the next 3 quarters? Do you just delete those cards, or move them to some other backlog.
Several things can happen with a card that's in the inbox: it can go to Roadmap, Planning, Engineering, Current Development, or just be archived if it's not something we can prioritize at the moment. Bugs have a separate board, so they usually don't end up in the Inbox.
Most of our customers' ideas live on our UserVoice feedback forum (feedback.uservoice.com). If an issue comes up during the Inbox review meeting and we don't plan on implementing the solution the next 3 Q's, we archive the card, or create an idea on our forum (if not there already). The key here is that people are encouraged to bring up that exact same issue next week, if it's still something that creates a lot of buzz among our customers. That helps us understand what the current pain points are and prioritize cards accordingly.
Great post. Trello is amazing. We are also a Trello/Google Doc company, but not as fancy as Uservoice.
You mention that each week has it’s own Live column; do you only keep The Current Week on the current development board? What happens to the older weeks, are they just archived or moved to another board? :)
Any insight on how you prioritize cards? Do you keep the process as simple as "I think A is more important than B, but less important than C." or do you use some sort of scoring mechanism?
What labels are used on the Product Planning Board?
Do you have a Work in Progress limit?
They seem to have individual ones, rather than stage based ones - from the original post:
Once you take a card you “put your face on it” (assign it to yourself). Dev etiquette is that you should never have your face on more than 2 cards at a time: 1 major project and 1 minor.
Once you take a card you “put your face on it” (assign it to yourself). Dev etiquette is that you should never have your face on more than 2 cards at a time: 1 major project and 1 minor.
Estimates got treated as gospel and planning was deemed extremely important, but nobody was willing to make the time for it to be done right.
I think web apps with shorter release cycles and fast deployments can really benefit from a process like this. You just have to be willing to try out simple, light weight tools and iterate on the process just like you iterate on the code.
Most shops tend to just use what they know rather than attempt to hack the process to meet their own needs. Kudos to the guys at UserVoice for going against the grain.