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Eric Wu Co-founder, Bracket Labs @ewu
Agile Software Product Development
MBAX 6360 - 4 NOVEMBER 2014
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• Co-founder of software startup focused on productivity software • Project management • Marketing management • Sales activity management
• 18 years of product experience, 10 with software • Automotive, telecom, hard drives, software • Engineering, product management,
executive
Who is this guy?
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Product Scorecard• Worked on 11 new products • 9 successful • 1 killed before launch • 1 big failure
• 6 of those products were software (including the failure)
Agile Software Development
Why is this relevant?
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-MARC ANDREESSEN, 2011Software is eating the world
The lessons of Agile are increasingly factoring into business leadership
Software is different• Writing the code = building the production
version • Your engineers and designers are working
on factory floor / Your production workers are responsible for creative process
• Constant learning and refinement as they go
• Quality is directly related to developer ability to creatively problem solve • Complex bugs can be incredibly difficult to
fix
Waterfall
Waterfall problems• Crystal ball business requirements • Analysis and design when we know the least • Big learning is when we code and test • Incorporating big learning into is expensive • Incorporating changed requirements is
expensive
How bad was it?• Data published in 2002: • Software projects needing
complete restart: 94% • Average change in project
requirements: 25% • Average cost overrun: 189%
• Launch delays are the norm • Highly unpredictable = high
business risk
The death spiral
Forced Marches
Decreased Creativity
Decreased Quality
Missed Schedules
Missed Schedules
Something needs to change• Starting in 90’s
experiments with “lightweight” processes • Scrum • Extreme
Programming • Early 2001 17
developers got together and compared notes
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Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan
The Agile Manifesto
What’s it mean?• Self-organizing teams • Trusted and accountable
• Regular, frequent conversations and cooperation between business stakeholders and the team building. • Lean on those conversations instead of
documentation • Working software produced regularly • Iterate, iterate, iterate • Value calm, regular, sustainable, predictable
pace of product development
Criticism• De-centralized control • Minimal documentation • Too loose • Requires significant behavioral changes • Collaboration • Visibility • Adaptation to feedback and performance
• Breaks down with teams >~10
agile vs. Agile• Eco-system of experts • Trainers • Consultants • Products
• Formalized processes • Rigid • Dogmatic • Lots of overhead
• Losing the forest
Sample Agile Process
1. Sprints
1 week “sprints” that have regular heartbeat
2. Sprint BreakdownEach sprint begins/ends with same set of meetings • Demo - Everyone in company invited to see what
was built in previous week • Retrospective - Team reviews previous week,
answers “what do we want to do more of? What do we want to do less of?”
• Planning - Product owner brings prioritized list of new things to build. Dev team estimates the size of each feature, commits to delivering it in next sprint until their plate is full.
3. Stand-ups
Daily “standup” meetings
• What did you do yesterday?
• What are you going to do today?
• Do you have any roadblocks?
Agile is evolving
10 YEARS AGO: “The shorter iteration the better, you could get crazy and go as short as 2 weeks!”
TODAY: 1 week sprints common
TODAY: Increasing # of teams continuously deploying • Netflix, Etsy pushing 30+ updates a day • Very possible with right infrastructure investment,
corporate values
Agile is evolving
10 YEARS AGO: “Fine for software but my business / product is different”
TODAY: Agile philosophy applied to Sales & Marketing, HR, Management
