Agile Development Blog

Ah, Marketing.  Enter a world of countless project requests, numerous stakeholders, limited resources and rapidly changing market conditions.

Sound familiar?  In fact, marketers face a lot of the same challenges as development teams, and Agile can be a powerful way to alleviate those common issues and intelligently plan our work.

In steps 1-5, I’ll explain how Rally’s marketing team conducts our version of Release Planning.  In steps 6-10, I’ll explain how we run our iterations to meet those commitments. Our planning processes continue to evolve, though this method has worked for awhile now.

10 Steps to Successful Marketing using Agile and Lean Practices

1. We recognize that Marketing has challenges that are different from Development.

• There is no unique product owner.  For example, if we chose Sales, then we would always rank lead generation over branding, customer programs or analyst relations, and that could ultimately hurt our company. Therefore we have to use some best-guessing to prioritize our backlog and determine what is most important.
• We face hard event deadlines set far into the future.  Sometimes we have no choice but to commit to an event or sign a contract months ahead of time.
• Each team member has unique expertise, i.e. writing, event planning, PHP development and so forth.  So one shared backlog is inefficient.

Now that we’ve reviewed the challenges, we give ourselves permission to do what we need to do, have patience and adjust anything that isn’t working for us.

2. Conduct an ORID to learn from the past

Before planning for the next quarter, we hold a retrospective in the form of an ORID, “a means to analyze facts and feelings, to ask about implications and to make decisions intelligently”, a process created by the Institute of Cultural Affairs.  We gather as a team to share:

• Observations (O) – What do we know?
• Reflections (R) – How do we feel about this?
• Interpretations (I) – What does it mean for the organization?
• Decisions (D) – What are we going to do?

This strategic overview helps set context for us to prioritize our focus for next quarter.

3. Align ORID decisions with company strategy

At Rally, we conduct quarterly and annual planning using the Plan Do Check Adjust methodology as explained in Getting the Right Things Done.   As we look at the overall company direction and goals, we keep these in mind as we hold planning at our own level.   Ideally, our major commitments support and align with company strategy. This also helps inform our “stop doing” list.

4. Poll our stakeholders

As part of determining quarterly commitments, we poll our major stakeholders for their top requests.  We use a Google survey to rank these requests by importance, size each request and bring these epics into our release planning meeting, to be included as part of our ranked backlog.

5. Conduct Release Planning to prioritize and agree on quarterly commitments

Now that we have all of our inputs, we hold our quarterly Release Planning session.  We write each epic on a sticky note and look at all of the possible work we could do this quarter.  Then, we evaluate epics based on importance taking company goals, stakeholder wishes, market realities like conferences and our own passions into consideration. We decide what we can realistically commit to, and agree as a team.  We keep in mind that making and meeting commitments is a huge deal, and we try really hard not to over-commit.

Part 2 – Meet our Marketing Commitments

6. Create a task board

Since our marketing team is mostly co-located, we pin up several large sheets of paper to use as a task board.  This is where we review our commitments on a daily basis as a sanity check that our stories are prioritized correctly and that we are tackling the right work as the quarter progresses.

As a team, we write our quarterly commitments on the task board with the definition of done assigned to each one.  We also include our “foundational” work – recurring work like website updates, online ad campaigns, field events, press releases and other important work that we need time to do.

Note: this is not a Kanban board because we do not have a shared backlog nor do we have a team-wide WIP limit.  As we break into smaller project teams that do share a backlog, we often use AgileZen to manage this work.

7. Hold iteration planning every 2 weeks

Every 2 weeks, we hold an Iteration Planning meeting.  Each team member has her own sticky note color, creates stories on those notes and manages her own prioritized backlog using T-shirt sizing to roughly estimate each story.  In this hour-long meeting, we begin by expressing appreciation for team members who gave exceptional assistance.  Then we hold a brief retrospective on what worked and what should change for the next iteration.  Finally, we each read out our prioritized stories for the iteration, putting them on the task board’s backlog.  This gives everyone visibility to what’s happening, identifies if someone is over-committed and lets the team swarm any epics with looming deadlines.

8. Conduct a daily stand-up

At the same time each day, we hold a stand-up meeting (with a consistent conference call #) that is at most 10-15 minutes long.  We form a semi-circle in front of our task board and share no more than 2 cross-cutting significant actions or take-aways from the day before, no more than 2 that we are planning to accomplish that day, and whether our work is blocked by any issues beyond our control.   As we start working on stories throughout the iteration, we move them from the backlog into their section of the task board to show what we are working on.  When the story is complete, then we move it to a place on the task board labeled “Done”.  Once the commitment’s Definition of Done is met, we check off that commitment and feel good about completing it.

9. Be patient as things change

It would be lovely if nothing changed during the iteration, but that just doesn’t happen.  The goal is ultimately to respond to change rather than cling to an outdated plan.  As new opportunities arise, new time-sensitive information appears and new requests are made, so our iteration work changes and that’s ok.  We try to just document what we’re working on and create new stories so that we can make intelligent prioritization decisions during the course of the iteration.

10. Retrospect, inspect and adapt

As we keep running our iterations and fulfilling our commitments, we are always looking for ways to improve them.   Ultimately, we’re using Agile to improve the quality of our work life by using objective, smart ways of planning how we spend our time. And we’re learning a lot from the journey.

I am passionate about design; if it were not for the boom-bust cycles in architecture, I would have followed that education/career path.  As a result of that passion, I got really excited when I saw HiveLive four years ago.  So excited in fact, that Rally jumped in as key first customer and based Agile Commons on HiveLive’s platform.  I even personally invested in the effort led by three Kembel brothers: John, Jeremy and Geoff.  Last year, HiveLive’s  journey took another turn as they sold to RightNow. After meeting RightNow’s David Vap and speaking with a good part of their technical team,  I would say John, the VP of Social Solutions, is right that they made a great move.

John’s design-thinking approach was front and center to HiveLive.  It came from his background at Standford’s design school and a stint at IDEO.  As I got to know John, he mentioned all the great things going on with his other brother and twin George.  George was busy creating a new version of the design school, called the Stanford d.school.   The new d.school has broadened beyond just a partnership of art and mechanical engineering to become a interdisciplinary school that brings design thinking to all majors.   As I learned more about this, I started pulling on John’s shirt to get me out there so I could go see the place and meet George.  Well last week, I participated in the first ever d.social summit for two days with 15 folks focused on the intersection of design thinking and social thinking.  Twins John and George Kembel actually facilitate in stereo.  To watch and be a part of their combined effort was like drinking from a fire hose.

The event and the people were great fun to work with and pushed my limits on the overlap of design thinking and social thinking.  Working there really made me feel strong and I found myself in a flow most of the time.  It caused me to notice that I really love the expansion of design to design thinking. But for you and your agile teams, the innovations in team room furniture was really important. Creating a culture of innovation relies on creating the right environment.  If you have read Takeuechi and Nonaka’s book on Knowledge Management, you will recognize the concept of “Ba.” Ba is the shared space that creates context for the knowledge-creating company.  (See figure 4.3 on page 102 of their book for a cool illustration of the whole concept)

The d.school is full of flexible, collaborative space of all kinds, shapes and sizes.  They are constantly trying new things there.  Built for running multiple, parallel design projects in 15 week cycles, it is empathetic to extreme users.  The space is in its sixth iteration of the space.  Scott Doorley and Dave Baggeroer worked with George over the last five years to really make this place something special.   As a result of working at the extreme of rapid collaboration, they have come up with some fantastic furniture designs that you should consider copying for your team and meeting rooms.  Unfortunately, you can’t buy this stuff – you have to build it locally.

Here is a set of stackable and highly portable white boards.

Notice the Z-shaped foot that allows them to stack and move around corners.  These ideas came from retail stores.  Also notice the red peg in the whiteboard.  This is designed to hang portable whiteboards that you can take back to your own space.   It could also hold a pad of flip-chart paper.

This line is where they store the student efforts.  Notice how the hanging whiteboards are stored.  It is easy to imagine collaborating in another person’s office and then bringing the whiteboard back to your office without using tons of flip chart pads.

Below is a portable wall system built with spring-loaded feet to allow you to make semi-transparent or opaque walls by lightly snapping them into place.  You can see them used above to make the line where student’s store their work.

These cool pommel horses, pictured below, make great furniture for a team collaboration space.  You can sit, stand or work at the structures and they force you to not think in hierarchies:)

Finally, don’t miss the d.school’s blog and the coverage of their sugar cubes.

I hope some of these pieces of furniture compel you to try some new furniture in your space.  If you are not quite sold, you might read Tim Brown’s new book “Change by Design.” It is a great living example of the approaches that IDEO and the d.school use to create empathy, insight and desirable design in physical, virtual and social systems.

Do you have any experience applying design thinking in your agile teams?  Jared Spool’s talk at Agile 2009 was a great example of applying design thinking to software.

Ryan Martens is a tomato grower, founding board member of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, and CTO at Rally Software Development.

Dear Readers,

Writing or receiving a break-up letter can be fairly daunting or shattering, depending on which end of the letter your name appears. That letter puts a pretty hard stop to a relationship. It’s communicating detachment and finality. It can create a lot of pain whether intended or not. In contrast, a love letter is uplifting. The endorphins fly! Someone is revealing their attraction for you, and their hopes and wishes for a future with you.

Now, there is a reason I have these letters on my mind. I’ve just returned from Rally’s Agile Leadership Forum – a great gathering of people eager to lead successful Agile transitions in their organizations. The event included a lively presentation from Forrester Research’s Senior Analyst Dave West: “Agile Adoption – Research Findings on the Adoption of Agile.” (You can find some of Dave’s data in the “Forrester Wave: Agile Development Management Tools, Q2 2010″). We also enjoyed an inspirational talk from our CTO Ryan Martens, called “Moving Agile Beyond Software.” These great presentations were followed by breakout sessions and a panel discussion about Agile challenges. Now, how to end the event?

As emcee of the forum, I not only kicked off the event, but it was my job to bring closure to the gathering as well. How can we have people walk away with thoughts about Agile? Why are they interested in the first place, and where do their concerns lie?  I was inspired by a video I recently saw about “breakup letters.” The Breakup Letter is a design research tool that Smart Design uses to understand the emotional connection between people and their products, services, and experiences. One person broke up with his cell phone, another, her single-cup coffee maker.

Now, just how does this relate to the Agile Leadership Forum? I liked the concept of the breakup letter, but I decided to entirely flip the idea and close the event by asking everyone to write love letters instead. In the spirit of Cyrano de Bergerac, I asked each table of participants to work together in crafting a “Dear Agile” letter. In this letter, they were to convey their attraction to Agile. And, they were to reveal where they were concerned about as well. All letters were to be from a secret admirer :-)

Once the groups began to read their letters, I knew we were on to something. Though I don’t have the reading of the letters on video, here are a few examples of our “Dear Agile” love letters.

Run this exercise in your own group to find out what the Agile “lure” looks like and also what the “turn-offs” might be.

Breathlessly awaiting your comments,

Jean

p.s. If you want to read some of the transcribed texts of the love letters, read on!

__________________________

Dear Agile,

I have admired you from a distance for some time. Waterfall and I are in the process of an ugly breakup. There is so much about you I need to know. My friend says great things about you. You are so simple and straightforward– no mind games like Waterfall.

This won’t be simple. Waterfall still has clothes at my place. My Facebook status is confused.

In the relationship as we get to know one another, we will have to know each other carefully– co-locating right away? Are we sprinting too fast?

Be gentle with me.

Looking forward to a rapidly developing future.

xoxoxo,

Secret Admirer

__________________________

Dear Agile,

I love you because you offer quick cycles, better quality, and better teamwork. From the first time I saw you, I thought I could begin saving money and add business value.

But, fair Agile, you are not so simple. I’ve heard you are a micro-manager. I don’t totally understand you. Some people are confused by you. On the surface, you sound so perfect and simple, but the more I get to know you the more questions I have.

But, among all my choices, I choose you. You promote collaboration, and allow me to turn things around quickly. You’ve helped me trim weight and stay lean. Don’t disappointment me, I trust you!

With all my love,

Megedá

___________________________

Dear Agile,

I loved you from the first moment I saw you, I loved your fast, speedy releases and that you don’t come with a lot of baggage or documentation. You’re simple and down to earth. You are a great communicator. I always know where you are and my friends love you, too.

I am, however, a bit concerned that not everyone accepts our relationship. I am worried that as my job continually grows and my needs scale up, whether you can handle the increasing challenges. And I’m concerned whether I can afford you… Our relationship and your attachments are what intrigue me the most.

Looking forward to spending more time with you and getting to know you better.  – Your secret admirer.

___________________________

Dear Agile,

We love you, we think you are awesome – for the following (bulleted) reasons:

• Agile accepts changes and encourages frequent changes
• Agile can start implementation before full requirements are known.

We do however have a few problems with you agile –

• Handling cultural change in the organization
• Does not solve all our issues
• Makes distributed teams harder to work with

- Your secret admirer -

Matt Phillips is a Senior Project Manager who has spent the last few years helping shape the Agile development process at Lulu.com. He currently heads up the Lulu Project Management Office and has spent several months setting up Agile practices in Lulu’s India office, based in Bangalore. In advance of his executive panel discussion at Rally’s Agile Success Tour in Raleigh, NC, we sat down with Matt to ask him 5 questions about Agile.

1. How have you implemented Agile across your organization?

We’ve rolled Agile out among all of our distributed teams, which are located in Raleigh, NC, the Ukraine and India. The time zones have historically been a challenge, so we had our remote teams spend several weeks in the Raleigh office working through daily Scrums. Now, they’re essentially as included in the process as possible. We use video conferencing for daily Scrums and to schedule iteration planning. All the teams collaborate to define stories, determine velocity, and plan iterations. We use Rally to make projections, track our velocity, and get visibility into the health of our projects. The metrics have become indispensible for judging how we’re doing, making accurate projections, and delivering upon our commitments.

2. What was your #1 reason for adopting Agile development?

Lulu adopted Agile at a point where the company was very much in start-up mode. The ideas were coming at a frenetic pace and the engineering team size was poised to expand. Agile methodologies were a good fit for Lulu’s culture and environment. The concepts of short iterations and regular release cycles paired with Scrum provided a quick time-to-market period for new ideas. At the same time, by adopting Agile methodologies, Lulu gained increased insight into the development team’s progress and performance as the team grew and feature sets became more complex.

3. What has been the biggest benefit of adopting Agile?

The metrics and amazing visibility we have into development projects. This is especially important for a team that’s 9,000 miles away. We have visibility into how they’re progressing on features, what’s coming next in the roadmap, and really flushing out what the product backlog looks like and where we’re headed.  Prior to implementing Agile, it was very hard to sync-up  (because of the 9 ½ hour time difference), maintain a feedback loop and foster collaboration with teams so far away.

4. What one piece of advice would you give to new Agile teams?

My advice would be to ease into it – kind of like steering a cruise ship, not turning on a dime. Start with familiar concepts and gradually introduce Agile practices over time. We started with familiar ideas like release dates, associated task lists, estimations, and tracking criteria. Then, we used a phased approach to introduce the concepts of iterations, story points and relative sizing, velocity, and ranking. We continue to work toward more granular inputs to smoothly coordinate roles, tools and dependencies within Rally as we go along to continuously perform at higher levels and get better outputs.

5. How can you tell that Agile is successful at Lulu.com?

One of top ways I can tell that Agile is successful in our organization is that people, even outside of engineering, are speaking in story points. That tells me that Agile has really taken hold. Using story points and velocity for our release planning makes it easy to arrive at a date that everyone is comfortable with. On top of that, our track record since adopting Agile shows that we’ve been delivering on our commitments every time.