Page 1
The agile journey of a start up
From a laptop in a box to a successful launch
Page 7
Traditional Financial Advice
Financial Advice and
Investment services
Page 9
Traditional Financial Advice
Financial Advice and
Investment services
Page 11
Financial Advice and
Investment services
Low fees! Sign up in your PJs!
Unbiased!
Page 13
Gareth - Dev
Taylor - Designer
Dane - Dev
Sahil - Investments, Genius
Harry - CEO
Anthony - Digital Strategy
Me - Product Grungle - Morale
Page 15
Work out what is going on
Page 16
My grand discoveries
Page 19
Well pretty much anyway
👌Development practises
were on point
Page 21
Pairing to teach or on difficult stuff
Page 22
Automated testing
Page 24
Then why did they hire me?
Page 25
Working softwareFast FeedbackCollaboration
Page 27
Back end and front end developed on separate time
frames
Page 28
Working on post MVP integrations.
Page 30
Very little testing with potential customers.
Page 32
Multiple backlogs
Page 33
It all lived in one (very smart) guy’s head.
Page 35
How can we build a shared view of where we are
going?
Page 38
not enough knowledge
Page 39
not enough social capital
Page 40
Let’s get a “wall”!
Page 41
Let’s have one github repository for requirements!
Page 42
Let’s prioritise our backlog of work!
Page 43
Lets’s do retrospectives!
Page 44
Most of it didn’t
Some of this stuff worked right away!
Page 46
“Don’t half ass two things. Whole ass one thing.”
-Ron Swanson
Page 47
So long May deadline
Page 50
How did we do it?
Page 54
A wall just the way we like it
Page 55
Clearly defined solution for every feature
Page 57
Concierge onboarding
Page 59
Analysis
UX + test
Design + test
Build
Review
Done!!!
Backlog
Page 60
What was the special sauce?
Page 61
Set a clear deadline we all believed in
Page 62
Set a challenging but believable scope
Page 63
Enable the team to create a sense of urgency.
Page 64
“Bite off more than you can chew and then chew like heck”
- Peter Brock
Page 65
Iterate like heck
Page 67
Beta = done Deadline = achieved What happens next?
Page 68
For us it was very obvious
Page 69
Tech lead prioritises
Page 70
Tech lead and product manager prioritise
Page 71
A wild gantt chart appears
Page 74
Executive prioritises
Page 75
“Something is very wrong with prioritisation”
Page 78
All the urgent work. None of the important work.
Page 81
Effective delivery ✅
Page 82
Collective ownership ❌
Page 83
Innovation mindset ❌
Page 84
Effective delivery is not enough. You also need
effective discovery.
Page 85
How do we improve collaboration?
Page 86
How do we build the right stuff?
Page 87
Objective Key Results
Page 88
"a critical thinking framework and ongoing discipline that seeks to ensure employees
work together, focusing their efforts to make measurable contributions."
Page 89
Objective = qualitative goal
Page 90
Key result = quantitative metrics of success
Page 92
decide OKR of the week pitch ideas
agree on ideas
Page 93
Analysis
UX + test
Design + test
Build
Review
Done!!!
Backlog
Page 94
Idea Discovery Delivery Done!!!
Page 95
Analysis = Product Manager
Page 96
Discovery = cross functional team
Page 97
Business Risk Value Risk
Usability Risk Technical Risk
Page 103
OKRs -> empowerment
Page 104
Discovery -> collaboration
Page 111
Much more ambitious
Page 112
Focus moves from feature parity to value
Page 113
More customer research
Page 115
No more retros of doom
Page 118
Building a team is a conscious process
Page 119
Delivery is only part of the equation. Discovering the problems is the real beast.
Page 120
Iterate. Learn. Iterate
Page 121
What you can take away
Page 122
OKRs are a great way to empower your team.
Try them out!
Page 124
Drive out features with a truly cross functional team
Page 125
Give your team(s) the flexibility to define their
practices
Page 126
Iterate. Learn. Iterate
Page 128
Elise Aplin [email protected]
All gifs thanks to giphy.com