Stacey Berlow President, Project Balance Product Camp NYC November 6, 2010

1. Making Product
Development Agile
Stacey Berlow
President, Project Balance
Product Camp NYC
November 6, 2010

2. 2 All rights reserved. Copyright 2010
Learning Objectives
• Learn about the core values of the Agile
framework
• Understand how the framework helps
teams be more customer oriented
• Take one idea away that you an
immediately use in your product
development efforts

3. 3
Agenda
• Overview of Agile principles – 15 minutes
• Group exercises – 20 minutes
• Group discussion – 10 minutes
• Wrap up – 5 minutes
All rights reserved. Copyright 2010

4. 4 All rights reserved. Copyright 2010
Origins of Agile
• 1950s: US Department of Defense and NASA
– used iterative and incremental development
• 1960s: Evolutionary project management (Evo)
– recommends two-week iterations focusing on delivery of product
each iteration
• 1986: Takeuchi and Nanoka
– Wrote seminal paper “The New New Product Development
Game” Discussed the “rugby approach” of dedicated, self-
organizing, cross functional teams
• 1990s: Agile methodologies take off
– Scrum, Extreme Programming, Rational Unified Process,
Dynamic Systems Development Model
• 2001: Agile Manifesto written

5. 5 All rights reserved. Copyright 2009
http://agilemanifesto.org/

6. 6 All rights reserved. Copyright 2010
Individuals and interactions
over
processes and tools
• Agile approach focuses on empowered,
self-managing teams
• You must consider all aspects about the
people on your team and how they work
together
• Communication and team collaboration
are key to creating innovative products

7. Individuals and interactions
over
processes and tools
Examples of cross functional teams:
Advertisement development:
• Artist, copy writer, language translator, product
owner, operations
Healthcare software:
• Physicians/clinicians, program managers, business
analysts software developers, testers

8. 8 All rights reserved. Copyright 2010
Working software (product features)
over
comprehensive documentation
• The project progress is measured by the
number of working features
• Even with very detailed specs, the design
is likely to change as it is built
• Documentation is an absolute
requirement. But the primary goal is to
produce a product not documents

9. Working software (product features)
over
comprehensive documentation
Examples:
Advertisement campaign:
• Prototypes/mock ups
Healthcare software:
• Prototypes, completed features

10. 10 All rights reserved. Copyright 2010
Customer collaboration
over
contract negotiation
• The customer become a part of the
development process
• Part of the development process is to
discover what the customer needs
• Customer feedback is essential at every
step of the process

11. Customer collaboration
over
contract negotiation
Examples:
Advertisement development:
• PM shows ads to consumers and gets feedback
• Customer sends in ideas to a website or blog
• PM participates in every aspect of the planning to understand
time, cost and quality constraint.
Healthcare software:
• Physicians/clinicians drive features requirements
• Customer sees and approves mock ups
• Test and approve software before release
• They work with team on timing of new releases

12. 12 All rights reserved. Copyright 2010
Responding to change
over
following a plan
• Many factors can and will change over the
course of the project
• Being able to respond to change is
essential
• The cyclic nature and iterative
development allows the team to respond
to change
• Planning is a requirement and must be
done continuously throughout the project

13. Responding to change
over
following a plan
Examples:
Advertisement campaign:
• PM finds out that a competitor has just launched a new product
and changes the ad copy in one of the iterations
• During the campaign you set specific iterations/check point at
which time you can adjust the copy, distribution. Etc.
Healthcare software:
• Physicians/clinicians drive the new feature set
• Physicians/clinicians drive the order in which the features are
developed

14. The Agile framework focuses on
activities to provide early
customer value

15. 15 All rights reserved. Copyright 2010
Value-Driven versus Plan-Driven
Features Resources + Schedule
Resources + Schedule Features
Agile flips the
triangle.
Plan-driven
Value-driven
Reference: The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agile
Traditional Agile
Set These First
… Then Calculate

16. 17 All rights reserved. Copyright 2010
Agile Is Not…
• Informal
• “Hack and pack”, “Cowboy Coding”
• Document free
• A free for all

17. Discussion Questions

18. 19
Agile Resources
• Agile Software Development with Scrum by Ken
Schwaber (Prentice Hall, 2002)
• http://www.scrumalliance.org/
• Improving Software Economics White Paper by
Walker Royce (IBM Rational, May 2009)
ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/sa/wh/n/ra
w14148usen/RAW14148USEN.PDF
• Agile Adoption Patterns by Amr Elssamadisy
(Addison-Wesley, 2009)
All rights reserved. Copyright 2010

19. Thank You
Email is Welcome
sberlow@projectbalance.com