Today we will cover...

●  Who are these people?

●  Are PMOs setup to fail?

●  How do we get back to Agile?

●  Our Fantastic Voyage through Process Experiments

o  ROIs and Roadmaps

o  Swagathons

o  The Social Experiment

Hello!

Heather Fleming, Sr. Director, PMO ●  Started out in front-end development, management and design

in 1996 ●  PMP Certified, Myers-Briggs (MBTI®) Certified ●  Heading up PMOs since 2006 XO Group and Gilt

Justin Riservato, Director, Program Mgmt ●  Started out in Customer Service and Product Marketing,

realized that the best part of every job was the Project Management

●  Fell in love with Gilt’s PMO philosophy and never looked back!

INFJ

ESTP

What is Gilt?

adjective

•  covered thinly with gold leaf or gold paint

noun

•  a young pig

What is Gilt? •  Gilt (www.gilt.com) is an e-commerce company focused on flash

sales. We provide insider access to top designers in sales typically lasting 72 hours.

•  We’re also one of the top tech companies in NYC!

•  Check out tech.gilt.com to learn more about us!

Are Traditional PMOs Set up to Fail?

Responsibilities of Traditional PMOs ●  Planning & Roadmapping ●  Resource & Capacity Planning ●  Implementing PM Processes & Standards

What’s the problem?

The company is expecting you to plan and roadmap...

Months (sometimes years) out...

In software engineering...

Given a short description of the work...

And you will be held accountable for your predictions!

You can’t predict the future!

So what do most people do?

●  They believe “going Agile” is a silver bullet. ●  People use the word “Agile” in many ways. ●  They implement Scrum!

And then what happens?

●  The company still wants you to predict the future. ●  The engineers are rebelling against the Scrum process. ●  The PMO is called into question anyway

Remember the Triangle of Truth

Remember the Cone of Uncertainty

Image from agilenutshell.com

Tell the truth!

And Remember the Manifesto!

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 PMO @ Gilt

We get things done. We tackle a lot of the operational function of running Gilt Tech. We help Gilt Tech explore and experiment with efficient processes to select and execute strategic projects. (Notice we didn’t say “standardize”...)

Our Fantastic Voyage

•  ROI, Roadmaps and RFW Process

•  One Pagers and Swagathon

•  The Social Experiment

Everybody Loves

Roadmaps

They’re so pretty!

Project Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

SEO V2

CMS

Email Redesign

Site Redesign

Landing Pages

WMS Upgrade

Referrals V2

ROI/Roadmap Process

Change Happens.

ROI/Roadmaps Retrospective

What works well with this model? What doesn’t work well?

ROI/Roadmaps Retrospective

What we learned... ●  We were on the “less valued” side of the Manifesto

o  We were spending more time planning than doing o  ...and more time on documentation o  ...and more time on processes and tools

●  We change a lot!

●  We want transparency and a say in the order of work

Swagathon

Scientific Wild A$$ Guess…-athon

The Spirit...

The Process…

The era of false hope.

Swagathon Retrospective

What works well with this model? What doesn’t work well?

Swagathon Retrospective

What we learned... ●  We were still on the “less valued” side of the Manifesto

o  ...we were following a plan instead of developing working software

o  ...we spent too much time on processes and tools

●  Creating “on the fly” teams was challenging

●  We were giving people false hope with our backlog

●  We could respond to change easier, but we were still missing a bigger story...

The Social Experiment

The Social Experiment

Product Visionary Driving product vision and strategic innovation. Strong point of view. PR and Relationship Manager Managing the external view of the team. Communicates well both verbally and via email. Knows how to deliver an excellent presentation. Product Ideator Thinking creatively and driving tactical innovation. Being the voice of the customer. Visual Designer Creates on-brand visual designs. UX Build wireframes, runs usability tests, designs user interactions. Coder Writes feature and test code. Create queries and reports. Product Marketer Analyzes the market and competitive landscape, determines product/feature positioning so the customer clearly understands the benefit, figures out ways to drive traffic to the product or feature. Business thinker Driving KPI thinking. Understanding business mechanics. Sizing opportunities.

Organizer Driving planning of work, running productive meetings, keeping the team focused on execution. Engineering Architect High level system design. Managing technical debt. Building for the right amount of performance and scale. Providing technical leadership and mentorship. Quality Manager Ensuring the quality of releases. Making sure that the right amount of automation is built (unit tests). Motivator Creating a sense of urgency while ensuring a sustainable pace for the team. Cruise Director Making things fun. Creating a sense of team spirit. Analyst Drives product instrumentation. Proposes tests (e.g. a/b tests). Analyzes data. Creates and tests hypotheses and uses these to influence product direction. Can clearly communicate what data means. Technical Operator Drives product instrumentation. Pays attention to production operational parameters (alerts, tuning, etc).

You are more than your job title!

Coder Write features and test code. Create queries and reports

Cruise Director Making things fun. Creating a sense of team spirit.

Motivator Creating a sense of urgency while ensuring a sustainable pace for the team.

The Social Experiment Retrospective

What works well with this model? What doesn’t work well?

The Social Experiment Retrospective

What we learned... ●  We know how our work ties into a bigger story

●  We know we are working on the things that matter the most

●  We want to continue to get better at Collaboration

●  Valuing Individuals and Interactions is key

●  Responding to Change will always be challenging

H E A T H E R F L E M I N G • S E N I O R D I R E C T O R , P M O • G I L T • @ H F L E M I N G J U S T I N R I S E R V A T O • D I R E C T O R , P R O G R A M M G M T • G I L T • @ S H A R K S N M E R M A I D S

Thank You!