Presentation from Agile and Beyond conference, Dearborn, Michigan, March 2012

1. Product Owner Safari
Enterprise Product Ownership
Elena Yatzeck eyatzeck@thoughtworks.com +1 773 573-7114
March 10, 2012

2. Target Participants
 Inquiring enterprise employees looking for how
agile might apply in their environment
 Practicing small-team agilists interested in what
enterprise agile looks like
 Practicing enterprise agilists looking for new
perspectives

3. Disclaimer
 90 minutes is not enough time to actually plan your
organization’s product owner strategy.
 Intention is to provide an outline and thought
experiment to get you started at home.

4. Why “Safari”?
 A safari is “a journey or expedition, for
hunting, exploration, or investigation, especially in
eastern Africa”
 A corporation is a complex terrain worth exploring
 Agile transformation is a journey
 Elephant
 Driver
 Path

5. Big Game Hunting: What
You Take Home
 Experience: simulation of an entire enterprise agile
project lifecycle
 Validation: for those of you who are tired of people
saying “That’s NOT AGILE” when you describe
what you do at your large company.
 Knowledge: 12 handy take-away concepts (in the
appendix)

6. Itinerary
 Product Ownership and the Business Case
 Product Ownership and Project Initiation
 Product Ownership Among the Details
 Product Ownership at Delivery Time and Beyond

7. Product Ownership and
the Business Case
 Input: Situation
 Market opportunity
 Stakeholders
 Team
 Output:
 Spider Web
 Lite Charter
 Product Owner Team Design

8. Input: The Situation - 1
 You work for a financial services company.
 The company is launching a mobile application to
interface with an existing corporate travel/expense
management system. In two quarters.
 Your team isn’t the mobile app team. You’re in
charge of the infrastructure changes to the
“Reimbursement-Direct Pay” functions that will
need to be made to support the mobile app.

9. Input: The Situation – 2
 Here are your stakeholders

10. Input: The Situation – 3
 Here is your team
Name Role Skills Connections
Jen Fremont Business-side project Organized and detail- 15 year veteran of 10
manager oriented. mergers. Knows all
survivors.
Norman Dwyer IT-side project manager Knows the technology Well-connected with other
solidly. Reputation for IT people.
being abrasive.
Jason Wu BA lead Graphic designer New to the company
Nivetha Scott QA lead End-to-end testing. Knows Knows everyone in the
the system functionality expense operations vertical
intimately.
Martin, Jez, Ola, and Developers Skilled developers who can Have not had face-to-face
Saleem do anything. contact with any business
people until recently

11. Output: Spider Web
Travel
Request
iPad app

12. Output: Lite Charter
 Elevator pitch:
 For ______________________________
 Who __________________________________
 The ________________is a ________________
 That ________________________________.
 Unlike __________________________
 Our product _______________________.
 Sample suggested by consultant: “For JungleBank stakeholders who want to maximize
their personal ROI, the JungleTravelMobileApp is a portable interface to our travel
system that allows corporate travelers to easily schedule their travel, log expenses, and
see the status of their reimbursements. Unlike competitor products like Concur or
DesertIslandMobileApp, our app incorporates camera scanning and bar codes.”

13. Output: Product Owner
Team Design
Product Owner Name Reasoning
Responsibility
Ultimate determiner of
value
Decision-maker for the
team
Writer of
Epics/Stories/Narrati
ves
Facilitator of SME JAD
Sessions
Detailed test designer
SME Wrangler (get
them to agree to
meetings, etc.)

14. Product Ownership and
Project Initiation
 Input:
 Lite Charter
 Product Owner team design
 Story map
 Consulting firm release plan
 Output: modified release plan

15. Input: Lite Charter
 Elevator pitch:
 For operations users in the Reimbursement/Direct Pay Integration area
 Who maintain flows of data related to reimbursements via Direct Pay
 The JungleMobileEnablement is an upgrade to current functionality
 That empowers mobile users to access up-to-date information about their
reimbursements.
 Unlike current functionality
 Our product maintains and displays information about per-customer
reimbursement status with a lag time of only one day, and provides a
secure API allowing the information to be accessed.

16. Input: Story Map
Near real- me
External API
feed
E2: Review E4: Screen to
E3: Screen to
E1: Review anomaly log update or
enable
anomaly log for DWH feed delete
customer for
for system to to API- customer
data
DWH feed accessible mobile app
availability
data store data
Story Story Story Story
Story Story Story Story
Story Story Story
Story

17. Input: Recent Staffing
News
 Joe Jonas has left the company to “pursue other
interests”
 The JungleTravelMobileApp product manager has
just married Ernie Hunsperger and moved to
Chennai
 Brian Wells has just taken a 3-month paternity leave
and put two subordinates in charge who don’t get
along with each other.

18. Input: Proposed Release
Backlog
Iteration Epic Value to
Sponsor
1-3 E3 MMF – Enable customer access 10
4-6 E2 MMF – Enable feed from warehouse 10
to external facing data store
7-10 E4 MMF – Enable faster feed from ops 8
systems to warehouse
10-12 E2 MMF – Enable customer updates 6

19. Output: Your Release
Backlog
Iteration Epic Value to SME
Sponsor availability

20. Product Ownership
Among the Details
 Input
 Requirements for one screen
 Examples
 Output
 Narrative

21. Input 1: Requirements
Report Data source Data type Length
field
CID CustomerDB Number
BankID BankDB Number
Date BankFeedDB Date
Description BankFeedDB Char 35

22. Input 2: Examples
 “If the current system is working right, I can
visually scan the log and detect things that don’t
look right. Then I can talk to the feed guys about
what the glitch was. It would be nice if I could get a
report with just the anomolies”
 “When the feed is down, I don’t know it until the
customer calls with a complaint. I can’t imagine
what is going to happen if we start letting people
check this on their iPhone.”

23. Output: Narrative
 Epic: In order to minimize the time it will take for a user to see
her reimbursements on her iPhone, As a Reimbursement
Operator, I want be able to monitor the status of the update feeds.
 Acceptance criteria:
 Scenario 1
 Given _____________________
 When______________________
 Then_______________________
 Scenario 2
 Given _____________________
 When______________________
 Then_______________________

24. Product Ownership at
Delivery Time and Beyond
 Input
 Current State Backlog
 Market Update
 Output
 Updated Backlog

25. Input: Current Backlog
State
Iteration Epic Value to Feature
Sponsor Toggle
Status
1-3 E3 MMF – Enable customer access 10 Deployed/
off
4-6 E2 MMF – Enable feed from 10 Deployed/
warehouse to external facing data off
store
7-10 E4 MMF – Enable faster feed from 8 Deployed/
ops systems to warehouse on
10-12 E2 MMF – Enable customer 6 Not
updates deployed

26. Input 2: Market Update
 Corporate spies at Concur reveal that Concur plans
to unveil mobile app functionality next month at
their Q1 TravelAppJamboree
 The JungleMobile team has completed a minimal
mobile app that could deploy your team’s back end
data to customers, if you are ready.

27. Output: Updated Backlog
State
Iteration Epic Value to Next
Sponsor action
1-3 E3 MMF – Enable customer access 10 Toggle on?
4-6 E2 MMF – Enable feed from 10 Toggle on?
warehouse to external facing data
store
7-10 E4 MMF – Enable faster feed from 8
ops systems to warehouse
10-12 E2 MMF – Enable customer 6 Keep
updates building?

28. Discussion
 What have we learned?

29. Appendix
 Agile Transformation
 “Switch: How to Change when Changing is Difficult”
 Concept/Product Owner Team Design
 DevOps Triangle
 Lean Startup
 Spider Web
 Lite Charter
 Product Owner Team Design
 Inception/Product Owner Team Planning
 XP Release Planning
 Story Mapping
 Elaboration/Product Owner Decision-Making at the Story Level
 Feature Injection/Behavior-Driven Development
 Narrative Template
 Delivery/Product Owner Consensus Around Delivery
 Backlog Grooming
 Continuous Delivery

30. Organizational Change:
Elephant, Driver, and Path
 Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard,
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, 2010.
 Change requires:
 Rationally convincing the rider
 Emotionally convincing the elephant
 Preparing the path

31. DevOps Triangle
 Agile Project Management, 2nd Edition, Jim
Highsmith, 2009.

32. Lean Startup
 The Lean Startup, Eric Reis, 2011.

33. Spider Web
 Innovation Games Spider Web, Luke Hohmann.

34. Lite Charter
Lite Charter
Sponsor: Jerome Smith Key Business Objec ves
Product Owner: Jeanine Jones
• Expected ROI 14% in 18 months
Elevator Pitch • Be er customer experience measured
• For (target customer) • Decreased cost of sales
• Who (statement of the need or opportunity)
• The (product name) is a (product category)
• That (key benefit, compelling reason to buy)
• Unlike (primary compe ve alterna ve)
• Our product (statement of primary
differen a on)
High Level Scope
Trade-off Sliders
IS IS NOT
Create and maintain customers Could be:
Scope - coverage of code base and Create and maintain debtors
ON OFF ac vi es Create and maintain le ers E-le ers to debtors
Enter invoice informa on
Search for invoices, customers, Will never be:
ON OFF Stay within budget debtors
Create le ers
Le er queue by day
ON OFF Deliver the project on me Create envelopes
UNRESOLVED
ON OFF High quality: Stability, reliability, Customer access to debts, invoices
adap veness
ON OFF Customer sa sfac on or usability

35. A Potential Product Owner
Team Design
 1 Executive Point person where the buck stops – responsible for
getting exec peer cooperation for all needed SMEs
 1 Business-side "feature point person" per desired feature (may be
business-side project manager, if you have both business and IT
PMs)
 Some large number of SMEs who have details about value and
usage of the feature (contacted only as needed by appointment,
with a fall-back appointment arranged in case the first one falls
through)
 A team of business analysts, user acceptance testers, and business
systems analysts who are responsible for knowing which SMEs
are needed for each feature, and are able to get those people to the
table in a reliable way (part of the core team, always working in
the metaphorical team room)

36. XP Release Planning
 Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, 2nd
Edition, Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres, 2004.

37. Story Mapping
 Jeff Patton, “The New User Story Backlog is a Map”

38. Feature Injection/BDD
 Chris Matts, Liz Keogh, Olaf Lewitz (diagram from
Lewitz)

39. “Narrative” Template

40. Backlog Grooming
Don’t
forget to
renego-
tiate your
SME time!

41. Continuous Delivery with
Feature Toggles
 Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through
Build, Test, and Deployment Automation, Jez Humble
and Dave Farley, 2010.