Sprinting Ahead – How RunKeeper Uses Atlassian Tools in a Fast-Paced Agile World - Rebecca...

Doug Williams • VP of Engineering • @dcwusa

Sprinting Ahead: How RunKeeper Uses Atlassian Tools in a

Fast-Paced Agile World

Rebecca O’Dette • Dir. of Program Management • @rebecca_odette

Doug Williams • VP of Engineering • @dcwusa

Sprinting Ahead: How RunKeeper Uses Atlassian Tools in a

Fast-Paced Agile World

Rebecca O’Dette • Dir. of Program Management • @rebecca_odette

Doug Williams VP Engineering

Rebecca O’Dette Director of Program Management

OUR MISSION:

ENABLE ACTIVE LIVING FOR EVERY BODY

GUIDANCE AND MOTIVATION CHANGES LIVES

RunKeeper and Breeze!

Our Challenges !• Multiple teams – and partners

• Multiple platforms

• Multiple releases

Our Teams

The Humanity of Teams

Balancing Tools & Processes

Communications Styles

Our Teams

The Humanity of Teams

Balancing Tools & Processes

Communications Styles

Ensure moving fast together – via Agile and Atlassian

The RunKeeper Team!

Our Values

•  #1 Value - Users come first !

USERS COME FIRST

SPEED & QUALITY ARE TOP PRIORITIES

RESPECT TEAM INDIVIDUALITY

Deliver better things out to users faster, while keeping quality high and

our teams happy.

Goal:

Team Evolution

2014!Larger, scrappy, “get it done” crew"New skills, roles & functions"Robust multi-team Agile set up"

Agile at RunKeeper !

Backlog

Time boxed “sprints”

Specific team roles

Scrum ceremonies

Story points & velocity

Scrum

Backlog

Continuous “pull” flow No specific roles/ ceremonies

Lead & cycle time

Kanban Scrum-ban

Backlog

Standups

Retrospectives

Iteration cycles

Today’s Agile Teams at RunKeeper

Scrum Kanban Scrum-ban

RunKeeper

Data

Marketing/Community

RunKeeper

User Support

Breeze

Devops

Our Teams

The Humanity of Teams

Balancing Tools & Processes

Communications Styles

Teams Are Made Of Humans And one size does NOT fit all…

Except...

Democratic Process Team members opt-in Optimize their own process Respect roles and key decision makers

Daily Standups!Vary by team – “made of humans” Teams select what works for them

Team Culture Celebrate success Personal Relationships Have fun!

Our Teams

The Humanity of Teams

Balancing Tools & Processes

Communications Styles

Balancing Act Between Tools & Process!

Tools & Process

to Empower &

Enhance

Teams using the

tool/process should

be part of the

decision

Optimization not Overhead

Considerations for Tools & Process!

þ What problem are you trying to solve?"

þ If there were no constraints how would you solve this problem?"

þ Would being explicit about who / what / where / when / how to

improve the situation?"

þ What’s specific to your company that needs to be considered?"

"

"

Our Atlassian Toolbox

Integrations with these tools / services

Keeping It Simple & Structured with Atlassian •  JIRA + Confluence = 1 login •  JIRA Agile – Plan & Work modes •  Logical workflow + minimum # of steps •  Reduce Admin time

Keeping It Simple & Structured with Atlassian JIRA + Confluence = 1 login & easy access to day-to-day info across teams

Login from Google Apps Menu

Filter by project & custom scrum team field for board view for each team

JIRA Agile – Plan & Work modes + Quick filters Make it easy for teams to see what’s coming & what’s current

Keeping It Simple & Structured with Atlassian

Fast access to sprints & Quick Filters for what’s important to the team: per person, by sprint & important team labels

Scrum Team Plan & Work Views Our Backlog

For team planning & everyone has access to what’s coming up

Our digital “scrum board”

Transparent status for in person and remote team members

Kanban Work View

Work in progress limits to keep work moving

Always ready prioritized backlog

Keeping It Simple & Structured with Atlassian Logical workflow + minimum # of steps to move from idea to release

Consistent workflow steps across teams / projects = Everyone knows the workflow & easy admin setup

Keeping It Simple & Structured with Atlassian Reduce Admin time

Share workflows, schemes, issue types, etc. across teams

Examples we use across Scrum specific teams

Simplify with Automation •  Stop wasting time copying & pasting •  Reduce duplicate data entry •  Get info to the right people •  Team reminders in Hipchat

Simplify with Automation Stop wasting time copying & pasting

Get work in your queue fast by creating JIRA issues from emails

Emails to datarequest@rk.com

are automatically created as “issue”

tickets and added to the queue

Simplify with Automation Reduce duplicate data entry

Pull from parent tickets: release versions, labels, epics, assignee, etc..

Set up workflow Post Functions to pull from parent on issue “Open”

Automatically pull content when creating 2+ issues at once

Simplify with Automation Get info to the right people

Auto assign issues by project, issue type, component

Post Function assigns to QA Lead

“Issue” created from email goes to triage queue

Simplify with Automation Confluence “blueprints” for quick & consistent document formatting

Retrospective “blueprint” makes it easy & quick to capture meeting

notes

Simplify with Automation Team reminders in Hipchat for standing meetings, tasks & GitHub updates

Zapier automated reminders

Automated GitHub updates

Our Teams

The Humanity of Teams

Balancing Tools & Processes

Communications Styles

People & teams have different ways and preferences for giving

AND receiving information

Communication & Different Styles • Encourage use of multiple channels • Consider the message, medium, and audience • Who I need help from? Who else needs to know about this? • People give/receive information differently

Communication & Different Styles Consider the message, medium, and audience

– Is your message informational, complex, real-time, require collaboration ? – Confluence is great for documenting, sharing & collaborating

Task lists + @ mentions make

actions and owners clear

Communication & Different Styles Encourage use of multiple channels

– Standups, in person, emails, hipchat – written, video – One of our primary forms of communication is hipchat gifs

Our GIF bot Steve PreBotaine pulls GIFs in HipChat based on

your specified search criteria

Team Calendars for Communication

Call out release milestones

Automatically pull in JIRA Sprints & Release Versions

+ Easy to use for visual project planning with teams

+ Per product / project calendars everyone can view

Central hub for our release planning & scheduling

Communication & Different Styles

Who I need help from? Who else needs to know about this?

Sprinting Ahead!

•  Trust your teams

•  Teams are made of humans

•  Ensure balance between tools & processes

•  Encourage a wide-range of communication styles

#atlassian

Thank you!!