Beer Miles! A Product Owner Simulation Game Robin Dymond David Douglas Innovel LLC Agile 2008 Released under the Creative Commons License ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page Beginner’s Mind • One of the most profound secrets of learning anything new is keeping what has been called a "Beginner's Mind" • To begin, we should empty our thoughts of all the preconceived ideas, concepts, techniques and methods that prevent us from receiving the new This seems like a simple thing to do, but can be quite difficult in practice • At first we think we are being open, but as we drink from the new knowledge we detect residual tastes of the "old" Sometimes this new mixture can be sweet, like adding honey to tea, but sometimes even a little residue can curdle the whole mix, like adding lemon juice to milk • Another important part of developing the beginners mind concerns getting rid of the "Been There, Done That" concept that seems so prevalent in today's society It may be true that you have been there, and you may have done that, but perhaps your conception of reality was not the whole concept, "the big picture" if you will ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page Room setup • Rounds/pods • 4-6 per table • Projector for powerpoint • Printed business case (2 pg.) for each person • Printed A6 index cards, a 39 card set per table ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page Where are you? ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page Product Owner Training Agenda • Where are you? • Why this exercise? The trainer’s goals • Setup: Thinking about value • BeerMiles! From Business Case to Product Backlog • Facilitation Notes ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page Why this exercise? • Product Ownership is a different role from traditional product management • The skills required for a good Product Owner (PO) are different • A key stumbling block is re-planning based on new information • Can we show that releasing in a few iterations really is possible? • Moving from business case to product backlog and first release ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page The Trainer’s Goals • Shift the mindset from: – Planning to delivery – From we can’t release to we must release • Shift the focus from guessing at value to testing for value • Focus on customer value not features ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page The Product Owner’s World ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page The Value Conversation How the best companies in the world think about value? ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page The Research… Good To Great by Jim Collins Found and researched over years 15 companies that went from mediocre to great performance ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 10 Business Drivers and Priorities Part - What are the high level capabilities for each of the business drivers? Exercise At your tables, group the high level capabilities provided with the Business Driver that they most directly support ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 27 Capabilities Discussion Discussion questions: Some capabilities weren’t called out in the business case, how did you deal with them? Did you have trouble sorting any of the items? If you had 150 detailed requirements, would it be easer or harder? How would you simplify? What obstacles / hurdles did you encounter during this exercise? How did you feel when having to make these decisions? Did you have enough, not enough, or more than enough to make a confident decision? Who would you need to communicate the results to? ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 28 Agile Planning Points and Relative Estimates Agile teams estimate work in using different techniques and levels of precision Story Points or Ideal Hours/Days are used to estimate User Stories on the Product Backlog Effort Points or Ideal engineering hours are used to estimate tasks on the Sprint Backlog Considerations that the team uses to estimate Difficulty, Time required, Organizational challenges, Uncertainty, Number of participants, and Dependencies Point estimates are relative measures of size (1,2,3,5,8,13,) Ideal Days/Hours are measures of effort ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 29 Agile Planning: Velocity The amount of work (Story Points/Ideal Hours), that an Agile team can complete in iteration A fixed size team working on a project has a stable velocity Well functioning teams cannot influence their velocity much Ideally, Agile teams are fixed in size, and all resources should be at least 50% dedicated to the project, with no more than projects at a time Velocity is impacted by: changes to the team, removal or additions uncertainty in requirements product owner availability to the team barriers – organizational, technological, SME availability, process overhead command and control – disempowerment of team to self organize around the work pushing too much work into the team (Mura) ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 30 Building the Product Backlog Business Case Business Drivers Categorize Prioritization Capabilities Backlog & Release Plan Part - Building the Product Backlog for delivery of valuable features Exercise Create a product backlog using the stories that you have been given Consider the business drivers, priorities, and any infrastructure as you prioritize Identify when you think you will have your 1st release Determine when you might release additional features into production – Team’s projected velocity is 100 points – The iterations/sprints are weeks long ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 31 Product Backlog Discussion • What was it like to plan with the information you had? • What looks risky to you? • When will you tackle it in your plan? • How would you communicate this plan? ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 32 Building the Product Backlog Part – Dealing with changes to the plan! Scenario 1: Team has completed the first iteration, the velocity is 50 points due to team learning about each other and the business domain, unplanned external dependencies, and on-boarding of new resources Exercise – At your tables, use the empirical data supplied to re-plan your product backlog and releases while still meeting the goals of your business case ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 33 Product Backlog Discussion How does this affect your release plan? How might you increase the team’s velocity? How would you manage your stakeholders/what would you communicate? Is there any way you can make your date? ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 34 Building the Product Backlog Part – Dealing with more changes to the plan! Scenario 2: Line of business #1 wants their first partner to be Brinker, with 1600 upscale restaurants Line of business #2 wants their first partner to be 711 and a “speed pass” card for beer points for use at POS Exercise – At your tables, use the empirical data supplied to re-plan your product backlog and releases while still meeting the goals of your business case ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 35 Product Backlog Discussion How would you resolve this conflict? How would you ground your decision? How often would you expect to go through this type of exercise on an Agile project? ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 36 A Final Exam! Is it OK for a project to have more than product owner? Why? What is the Product Owner’s primary responsibility? ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 37 The Punch Line • A large financial services company actually did this type of product (not beer) • A co-marketing agreement with the partner was put in place • They added two fields the account management screens • They managed the rewards with a spreadsheet • When someone claimed rewards, they went to the partner, bought gift cards, and mailed them out • No new applications, environments or hardware were required ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 38 Facilitator Notes • What are the key take aways people should come away with? • How does the framework facilitate prioritization? • What are the “traps” that are setup for the participants? • Are there other issues you might use? • What are the issues you need to emphasize? • How does maximizing value play into this exercise? • How would you debrief this exercise? ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 39 Facilitator Notes • How does incremental increase in information change the prioritization? • What would you emphasize when doing this training? • How would you debrief this training? ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 40 Where Can I Get More Information? • Find all the materials presented today at: • http://www.innovel.net/?page_id=65 • Good to Great by Jim Collins • Do it Wrong Quickly by Mike Moran ©2008 Innovel LLC, Rights Reserved www.innovel.net Page 41