keeping up with agilists

HELPING PEOPLE CREATE GREAT PRODUCTS

Committing to $$ and Dates in an Agile World

Todd Olson

www.pendo.io

First, a little about me● CEO & Co-Founder, Pendo

Prior● VP Products, Rally Software● CTO / Co-Founder, 6th Sense Analytics● Chief Scientist, Borland● VP Development, TogetherSoft● CTO / Co-Founder Cerebellum Software

Tweet @tolson

Don’t get run over. Change first.

Different Levels of Abstraction

Feature 1 Feature 2 Feature 3 Feature 4

Story A

Story B

Story C

Story D

Story E

Story F

Story G

Story H

Story I

Story J

Initiative

Something a customer cares about.

Something you budget for.

Feature 1 Feature 2 Feature 3 Feature 4

Story A

Story B

Story C

Story D

Story E

Story F

Story G

Story H

Story I

Story J

InitiativePrioritize Within...

must-have

should-have

could-have

PRODUCT

Marketing

Support

Broader Value Streams

Input Analysis Ready Develop Internal-only External

Exit Criteria Preliminary EstimateStories broken downMust-have stories

UI Mock-upsShould-have storiesTech Design

Code completeAutomated Tests passingManual testing

Documentation completeMarketing BlogEmail marketing doneWebsite updated

Customers identifiedBusiness case

Metrics collecting

FEATURE

MarketingSupport

SalesSupport

Product UXArchitecture

Engineering MarketingOps

Even Broader Value Streams

Business Case Analysis Fund Development Collect

Evidence

Exit Criteria Feature Break-downOther dependencies

High-level estimatesResources allocated

Code completeMajor feature shipped

ROITop Customers to use

Usage MetricsBusiness Case check-in

INITIATIVE

What does the Board care about?

&

How much..

Is a feature worth?

User/Business Value + Time Value + Risk Reduction / Opportunity Enablement

Cost

What does this make easier? What sort of leverage can we get?

How timely is this? What’s the cost of missing?

How much do our users/customers value this?

Track a Business Value Point

Investment Allocations

Forecasting Dates in an Agile Way

1 Calculate Throughput across period (week, month, etc)

2 Use throughput to compute how many items on force-ranked backlog you can complete in the chosen period.

Example: Forecasting Dates

XS

S

M

L

2

Point Conversion

4

8

16

Quarterly Throughput

Q1: 40 feature pointsQ2: 38 feature pointsQ3: 42 feature points

FEATURE SIZES

Q3

Q4

Large Feature 1

Small Feature 1

Small Feature 2

Remember that there is prioritized variable

scope within each Feature!!!

Large Feature 2

Options: Forecasting Dates

Loads of options based on process...

Artifact: Feature or Story

# of items or Sum of Estimates

Story Point Estimates or T-Shirt Sizes

INSPECT AND ADAPT

Are our T-shirt sizes good?

XS

S

M

L

2

Point Conversion Actual Cycle Times

1d

4 3d

8 5d

16 20d

2x 4x

Business Value Feedback

ForecastOur biggest customers really need this.

This is going to kill the competition.

This is going to save use millions of $$.

Every user is craving this.

ActualsYet only 2 customers start using it after the release.

The competition copied us in a month.

Cost of training and change negated the savings.

5% of users tried out.

Measure everything● Usage

○ By customer○ By user

● Revenue○ Sales cycle○ Win-loss

● Cost-savings● Customer Satisfaction● Developer Satisfaction● Support Tickets● Forum posts● Help searches

Continue your Agile Journey...

Start small…

Start with Features

HELPING PEOPLE CREATE GREAT PRODUCTS

Questions?

www.pendo.io