LSP METHODOLOGY

GUIDE

LSP Group

2017

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................... 3

Scrum framework ............................................................................................................................................ 4

Why scrum? ..................................................................................................................................................... 4

Scrum Principles .............................................................................................................................................. 5

Lean Canvas ..................................................................................................................................................... 6

Why Lean Canvas? ........................................................................................................................................... 6

Lean canvas life cycle ....................................................................................................................................... 7

Knowledge lean canvas .................................................................................................................................... 7

Lean and Scrum ............................................................................................................................................... 9

LSP Methodology ........................................................................................................................................... 10

LSP Principles ................................................................................................................................................. 10

The Roles in LSP ............................................................................................................................................. 10 Business Owner ................................................................................................................................................ 10 Business Team .................................................................................................................................................. 10 Product Owner ................................................................................................................................................. 10 Scrum Master ................................................................................................................................................... 11 Development Team .......................................................................................................................................... 11

LSP Artifacts ................................................................................................................................................... 11 Lean Canvas ...................................................................................................................................................... 11 Product Backlog ................................................................................................................................................ 11 Sprint Backlog ................................................................................................................................................... 11 Sprint ................................................................................................................................................................ 11

LSP Cycle ........................................................................................................................................................ 12

LSP Events ...................................................................................................................................................... 13 Lean Canvas Planning ....................................................................................................................................... 13 Sprint Planning ................................................................................................................................................. 13 Daily Scrum ....................................................................................................................................................... 14 Sprint Review and Lean Canvas Review ........................................................................................................... 14 Sprint Retrospective ......................................................................................................................................... 14

References ..................................................................................................................................................... 15

Introduction

In the past few years, mobile devices has witnessed significant

developments, along with software platforms that faced swift growth.

However, various shortcomings and research gaps still exist in the field.

Many believe that mobile applications are developed with minimum

expenditure. However, producing and developing such applications is a

complicated practice, often resulting in low quality productions due to

budget shortcomings.

Overall expenses are a key factor, since a great deal of software

developments failed to produce acceptable applications, simply because of

funding deficiencies. Moreover, inappropriate scheduling to publish the

applications may deviate developers from the proper development

direction, creating considerable challenges in mobile software

development process. Developers should have a precise reason before commencing application

development, while conducting preliminary research to have an admissible

schedule, alongside with employing certain measurements to provide

timing and cost estimations.

In this chapter, a solution is provided to overcome cost and time challenges

facing mobile device software developments, while adopting two

measurements to facilitate the process.

Scrum framework and lean canvas are the two measurements adopted to

deal with time and cost challenges, and providing a proper scheme to

develop mobile device applications. Moreover, these measurements enable

prompt project conclusions with minimum expenditure, to accommodate

mobile device application developments.

Scrum is a framework utilized for agile development, which provides

agility for development teams through defining processes, roles and

specific artifacts. In Scrum, applications are developed in a step by step

fashion, which is most convenient for projects facing major revisions.

Lean canvas determines the highest levels of uncertainty and risk,

providing developers with utmost understandings in the most prompt

timing, enabling satisfactory development.

This chapter covers 3 sections, namely scrum, lean canvas, and a purpose

methodology named LSP (Lean Scrum Propulsion).

Scrum framework

Scrum is a framework where complex adaptive problems are addressed

within, while delivering results of the highest possible value productively

and creatively [1].

Scrum a well-known agile software development methodology, which has

successfully increased development and testing productivity

simultaneously in various companies. However, some scrum failure

instances are also mentioned in [2].

Scrum includes team efforts for reaching goals and outlooks to produce

new services or products. It enables the team to conclude projects in short

time and low cost, by including products, events and roles in the outset of

the cycle. This cycle includes product backlogging, sprint backlogging,

creating deliverables, daily standups, and accepted deliverables; much like

iterative processes.

Why scrum?

Using scrum benefits the projects in numerous ways, such as:

1. Adaptability: Empirical process control and iterative delivery makes

projects adaptable and open to incorporating changes.

2. Transparency: All information channels (e.g., Scrum board and

Sprint Burn down Charts) are shared, leading to open work environment.

3. Continuous Feedback: Continuous feedback is provided through

conducting daily standups, along with demonstrating and validating sprint

processes.

4. Continuous Improvement: The deliverables are improved

progressively sprint by sprint through the Groom Prioritized Product

Backlog process.

5. Continuous Delivery of Value: Iterative processes enable the

continuous delivery of value through the Ship Deliverables process as

frequently as the customer requires.

6. Sustainable Pace: Scrum processes are designed such that the people

involved perform at a sustainable pace and, in theory, continue indefinitely.

7. Early Delivery of High Value: Creating a Prioritized Product

Backlog process ensures that the highest value customer requirements are

satisfied first.

8. Efficient Development Process: Time-boxing and minimizing

non-essential work leads to higher efficiency levels.

9. Motivation: The Conduct Daily Standup and Retrospect Sprint

processes lead to greater motivation levels amongst employees.

10. Faster Problem Resolution: Collaboration and colocation of

cross-functional teams lead to prompt problem solving.

11. Effective Deliverables: Creating Prioritized Product Backlog

process and regular reviews following deliverable creation, ensures

effective deliverables to the customer.

12. Customer Centric: Emphasizing business value and obtaining a

collaborative approach to stakeholders ensures a customer-oriented

framework.

13. High Trust Environment: Conducting Daily Standups and

Retrospect Sprint processes promote transparency and collaboration,

leading to a high trust work environment ensuring low friction among

employees.

14. Collective Ownership: The Approve, Estimate, and Commit User

Stories process allows team members to take ownership of the project and

their responsibility, leading to higher quality.

15. High Velocity: A collaborative framework enables highly skilled

cross-functional teams to achieve full potential and high velocity.

16. Innovative Environment: The Retrospect Sprint and Retrospect

Project processes create an environment of introspection, learning, and

adaptability leading to an innovative and creative work environment [3].

Scrum Principles

Scrum framework is constructed upon six principles:

1. Empirical Process Control

2. Self-organization

3. Collaboration

4. Value-based Prioritization

5. Time-boxing

6. Iterative Development

Lean Canvas

When an idea is flown into a company, there needs to be methods to

express the idea in a meaningful, yet concise manner without bulk and

extensive time commitments [4].

In 1990, Toyota Production System (TPS) introduced and utilized seven

lean principles in Japan. In a lean process, the seven core principles aim to

remove the system wasted “Muda” [2].

The lean canvas was first delivered as an experiment by Ash Maurya.

If the hypothesis include customer and ideas for the problem, following by

design and running experiments, while failing to perform business analysis

to understand customers, problems and solutions, it would lead to

problems. Therefore, it is necessary to run the analysis on the idea over a

canvas.

Why Lean Canvas?

The main objective of canvas is to help companies move beyond product-

centric thinking and towards business model thinking. The business model

canvas, as opposed to the traditional intricate business plan, facilitates

organizations in conducting structured, tangible, and strategic

conversations for new businesses and existing ones. The one-page canvas

format is particularly preferred since it is:

• Fast: Compared to writing a business plan, which potentially

consumes several weeks or months, multiple business models on a

canvas are outlined in one afternoon. Since creating these one-page

business models require very little time, it is recommended to spend

some additional time up front to brainstorm possible variations in

model and prioritizing the start point [5].

Concise: The canvas forces the conductor to pick words carefully

and get to the point. This is great practice for distilling the essence

of the product. It is mentioned that the presenter has 30 seconds to

grab the attention of an investor over a hypothetical elevator ride,

and eight seconds to grab the attention of a customer on the landing

page [6].

Portable: lean canvas is single page and is easily shared with others.

Lean canvas life cycle

The life cycle of lean canvas is demonstrated in figure 1, starting from the

idea and culminating at validated business idea.

Figure 1: Lean canvas life cycle

Knowledge lean canvas

Before providing the context to lean canvas, it is required to recognize the

lean canvas. This is described in figure 2.

Figure 2: Lean canvas

PROBLEM

Existing Alternatives

SOLUTION

UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION

High-Level Concept

UNFAIR ADVANTAGE

CUSTOMER SEGMENTS

Early Adopters

KEY METRICS CHANNELS

COST STRUCTURE REVENUE STREAMS

Ideas

Learn

Data

Build

Measure

Product

2

4

8

7 6

3

9

5

1

As is shown in figure 2, essential blocks of the business parameters are as

follows:

1- Customer segments: defining customers and identifying early adopters.

2- Problem: mentioning one to three important issues and identifying

available alternatives.

3- Unique value proposition: Expressing a unique message, which is clear

and compelling, and explaining why it is different from other messages,

and worthy of attention.

4- Solution: A solution which is provided for any problem. 5- Channels: the path from the initial day to building and testing the

trajectories to customer.

6- Revenue streams: demonstrating the generated potential revenue. 7- Cost structure: Providing the costs associated with the offered solution.

8- Key metrics: Representing progress on the basis of the obtained results.

9- Unfair advantage: consisting any advantage the current project possess

over its competitors.

Lean and Scrum

The daily growth of technology demands more actions done using hand-

held devices. For instance, transactions like paying bills and money

transfer, which traditionally were accomplished in banks, are now

performed with mobile phones. Hence, mobile applications are required to

be developed in a way that satisfy such goals.

Over the last decade, agile and lean methodologies became very popular

for software development in general. However, been a few researches were

conducted on the applicability of such methods in mobile applications [7].

Agile tends to target software development, while Lean Startup targets

business development, product management, and customer development

[8]. Based on the discussions addressed in lean canvas section, the core target

of the lean canvas focuses on life cycle. What is desired, is to combine this

with the core of the scrum, to achieve a combination of the two, to create

methodology agility together with minimum risk. Principles of the least

canvas and scrum are as follows:

Lean Canvas Principle Scrum Principle

Ideas Product backlog, sprint backlog

Build Development

Product Testing

Measure Sprint planning meetings

Data Test data, Burn-down charts

Learn Retrospective meetings, sprint review

LSP Methodology In this section, we propose a new methodology based on the use of lean

canvas with scrum in mobile development, which creates a novel

methodology called LSP (Lean Scrum Propulsion). Using lean canvas

achieves the least amount of expenditures. While with scrum, assigning the

least amount of time for product conversion is feasible. What is notable is

that the principles of the two methodologies remain intact, just a

combination would suffice.

LSP Principles

LSP methodology encompasses nine principles:

1. Market analysis

2. Empirical Process Control

3. Self-organization

4. Cross-functional

5. Collaboration

6. Value-based Prioritization

7. Time-boxing

8. Iterative Development

9. Incremental Development

The Roles in LSP

Business Owner

Business owner is a person whom handles customer (vision)

interaction.

Business Team

A business team is consisted of 4 to 8 members that, fill the lean

canvas considering the market analysis parameters.

Product Owner

Product owner is a person whom fills the product backlog according

to the interaction.

Scrum Master

Scrum master handles the scrum trainings, while assisting the

development team in the project.

Development Team

The development team includes 4 to 9 developers, which handle the

building procedure and further actions.

LSP Artifacts

Lean Canvas

The lean canvas is the analysis of market for ideas, which is fulfilled

using the owner and the business team.

Product Backlog

The product backlog is a prioritized log filled by the product owner

according to interactions held with the business owner.

Sprint Backlog

The sprint backlog is a list prioritized together with the plan for the

team to track work accomplishments.

Sprint

The heart of Scrum is a Sprint, which as mentioned before, is

executed in 2 or 4 weeks. However, it is different from sprint

backlog in features, and is possible to have a changed time sprint.

While the sprint is being executed:

1. No changes should be made that endanger the Sprint Goal

2. The quality objectives should not decrease

3. The scope may be clarified and re-negotiated between the

Product Owner and Development Team, as the process is

moved forward [1].

LSP Cycle

Figure 3: LSP Cycle

Figure 3 describes the flowchart from the idea to product plane. First, it is

the interaction between customers (vision) and the business owner. Next,

business owner collaborates with business team to fill the lean canvas,

which continues using interaction with regard to lean canvas and what the

product owner prioritized, along with what is filled in the product backlog.

Finally, scrum activities are performed afterwards.

LSP Events

Lean Canvas Planning

This event is a meeting where business owner and business team

collaborate in answering the questions and filling the lean canvas,

which takes about 3 hours.

Sprint Planning

In sprint planning, the following questions are answered:

As the result of the increments resulted from the upcoming sprint,

what can be delivered?

How to achieve will the work required to deliver this increment?

Sprint planning meeting: 13:00 – 17:00 (10 minute breaks every

hour)

• 13:00 – 13:30. The product owner reviews the sprint goal and

summarizes product backlog. Also, the place to hold the demo, along

with date and time are set.

• 13:30 – 15:00. The team perform time estimations, and breaks down

the items where necessary, the product owner updates the

importance ratings where necessary, items are clarified, and “How

to present the demo” is filled in for every high-importance item.

• 15:00 – 16:00. The team drafts the stories to be included in the sprint,

and performing velocity calculations as a reality check.

• 16:00 – 17:00. Choosing the time and place for daily scrums (if they

are different from the last sprint). Further breaking down stories into

tasks [9].

Daily Scrum

Daily scrums are standup meetings taking 15 minutes. In this meetings,

development team members are asked to answer the following three

questions. It is worth mentioning that the answers to these questions are

not reported to the product owner, or the scrum master.

What I did yesterday?

What I want to do today?

What challenges I have ahead of me?

Sprint Review and Lean Canvas Review

When the Sprint is ended, a Sprint and Lean Canvas review meeting is

held, where the Business owner, Business Team, Product Owner, Team

Members, and Scrum Master are present. Moreover, customers,

interaction, experts, executives, and anyone else who is interested may

also be present in these meetings.

Sprint Retrospective

At the end of each sprint, the Scrum team meet for the sprint

retrospective, which is also time tabled for about an hour per week

for the duration of the sprint [10]. In this event, presentations on lean

canvas during the present product are exhibited.

References

[1] S. Fitzgerald, “November 2009 Meeting Announcements,” J. Ren. Nutr., vol. 19, no. 6, p. 504, Nov. 2009.

[2] P. Nidagundi and L. Novickis, “Introducing Lean Canvas Model

Adaptation in the Scrum Software Testing,” Procedia Comput. Sci., vol.

104, no. December 2016, pp. 97–103, 2017.

[3] T. Satpathy, SCRUM BODY OF KNOWLEDGE, 2016th ed. Arizona, 2016.

[4] M. E. Moreira, The Agile Enterprise. Berkeley, CA: Apress, 2017.

[5] E. Reis, “Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works.”

[6] Marketing Sherpa, “Landing Page Handbook,” p. 273, 2012.

[7] R. Vallon, L. Wenzel, M. E. Brüggemann, and T. Grechenig, “An Agile and

Lean Process Model for Mobile App Development: Case Study into

Austrian Industry,” J. Softw., vol. 10, no. 11, pp. 1245–1264, 2015.

[8] A. Miski, “Development of a Mobile Application Using the Lean Startup

Methodology,” Int. J. Sci. Eng. Res., vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1743–1748, 2014.

[9] Henrik Kniberg, Scrum and XP from the Trenches. 2007.

[10] SCRUM Alliance, “Core Scrum,” pp. 1–14, 2012.