agile needs storytellers
TRANSCRIPT
Illusion of progress
Calling something ‘agile’ doesn’t make it true
Peter Merrick Ph.D. Advanced Product Ownership, Berlin [email protected]
What’s agile?
Agile is a response to poor requirements specs
Peter Merrick Ph.D. Advanced Product Ownership, Berlin [email protected]
Enfant Terrible• Programmers dream methodology• Hostile to Requirements Engineers• Opposite of ‘waterfall’• Waterfall wants Agile to mature• Agile thinks it’s perfect • Scaling is accepted as hard• The ‘self-organizing’ team is ‘sacred’
Agile is the ‘Enfant Terrible’ of the RE world
Peter Merrick Ph.D. Advanced Product Ownership, Berlin [email protected]
If the hat fits (wear it) 2
• Ninja• Guru• Magician• Warrior• Badass• Overlord• Visionary
Peter Merrick Ph.D. Advanced Product Ownership, Berlin [email protected]
Culture• Agile is easier in ‘flat’ organizations• Big = hierarchy
• Requires cultural shift• No explicit role for managers
–managers become leaders• Equally hard to co-ordinate between multiple teams• Doesn’t work well with distributed teams• Requires disciplined product story management
The Spotify Process and the GmbH Process are different
Peter Merrick Ph.D. Advanced Product Ownership, Berlin [email protected]
Scrum slide
Requirements are now ‘stories’. Stories are bite-sized.Planning: [ID, Prioritize, Flesh out, Discuss, Play, Test/Accept]
Peter Merrick Ph.D. Advanced Product Ownership, Berlin [email protected]
Capacity and estimation
Planning = planning poker
Stories are accepted or rejected based on understandability
How many stories? Depends on team’s capacity. Depends on team size. Average size of story
10 day sprint = 8 days dev. Say team size of 5. Story point = 1 day. 40 points/days. Average story size = 2. Therefore 20 stories.
Why do I care? Because I want the team to have enough work to do
Start by guessing and get more accurate with data
Planning is an activity based on ‘stories’
Peter Merrick Ph.D. Advanced Product Ownership, Berlin [email protected]
PO as a team functionMarketing/CustomerService/Sales
Development
Requirements team
Peter Merrick Ph.D. Advanced Product Ownership, Berlin [email protected]
Horizontal and then vertical
Horizontal and then Vertical
Peter Merrick Ph.D. Advanced Product Ownership, Berlin [email protected]
Skeleton stories
Narrative scenario (persona)UI (what does it look like)Test (how does ‘done’ look)
Peter Merrick Ph.D. Advanced Product Ownership, Berlin [email protected]
As a…I want to…So that…
PO as a team function
Product owner
Storyteller/analyst
UserInterfacedesigner
Tester
Peter Merrick Ph.D. Advanced Product Ownership, Berlin [email protected]
Review• Calling it ‘agile’ does not make it so• Agile is a frustration response to slow and inaccurate specs • Agile is hostile to waterfall• Agile requires a particular culture to work• Because agile is ‘hot’ is not a good enough reason to try it• Scrum trivializes ‘planning’• ‘Planning’ is vital to support Scrum or it stops• Requirements team plays the Product Ownership role• Product Ownership role incl. PO, Storytellers, UI, Test• Storymapping allows for a description of scope• Interesting metrics open the door to accurate estimation
Review
Peter Merrick Ph.D. Advanced Product Ownership, Berlin [email protected]
Questions + follow up
Are you a ‘storyteller’?
Peter Merrick PhDAdvanced Product [email protected]
Medium.com/agile-storytelling
@PeterMerrick5
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