Prioritize Your Backlog! Great Advice…

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Prioritize Your Backlog!

Great Advice…John Heintz

Founder, Gist LabsSenior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

[email protected] @jheintzhttp://gistlabs.com

mailto:[email protected]

© 2012 Gist Labs, LLC2

About John Heintz• Developer since 1995• Agilist since 1999• Founded Gist Labs in 2008

• Developer, Mentor, Consultant• Intuitive, Abstract, Precise

Kool-Aids I’ve drank:Agile/Lean/Kanban, OO, TDD, REST, Mentoring, Craftsmanship, Emergent/Progressive Design, InnovationGames®, Systems and Complexity Theory


Ground Rules•Law of Two Feet: Quietly leave if

you think your time would be better spent elsewhere

•Interrupt me with Questions


Agile is great!!

•But… Agile alone isn’t everything you need


Vapid

“lacking liveliness, tang, briskness, or force”

Merriam-Webster


Huh?“a nice sounding goal… that conveys no advice”

me

No clear how, or why


think desert mirage…


Let’s think of some examples…


Retrospect!


Collaborate with your customers!


All of these:Really Good Ideas

•You absolutely should be doing these

•Most Agile classes, texts, experts say so


And Yet…

•There is very little actual advice for how to do these things


My Conclusion is•Agile is great•Some parts of Agile are only the

hint of advice for how to actually do something

•You must fill in those gaps when it’s important for you business/project/team


How I Judge Tools…


Concrete Reflective Tools

Tools which are immediately useful, generate feedback from their use, and are backed by their own guiding principles.


Concrete!


not AbstractThis is “House in

abstract landscape” by

Franz Mark

You saw that, right?


Hi, my name is John.I’m an INTJ


Myers-Briggs Type Indicatoris a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator


Myers-Briggs Dichotomies

Extraversion (E) - (I) IntroversionSensing (S) - (N) IntuitionThinking (T) - (F) FeelingJudgment (J) - (P) Perception


Sensing and intuition describe how new

information is understood and

interpreted.


Individuals who prefer sensing are more likely

to trust information that is in the present, tangible and concrete:

that is, information that can be understood

by the five senses.


Those who prefer intuition tend to trust

information that is more abstract or

theoretical, that can be associated with other

information


Here's the kicker: it's not an even distribution.

S-vs-N73.2% is S, 26.8% is N

You can easily lose over half your

audience


What is the Agile advice?

Prioritize your backlog based on customer value



How do we measure customer value?What about other stakeholders?



We need more that just mandate to do something, even if it’s a good idea.This mandate is vapid, without substance


Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value



1.Know a lot about your customers and solution

2.Keep your risks smaller than the total value of the solution

3.Grow customer value4.GOTO 1


Validated Knowledge

•Don’t just pretend to know something

•“By what evidence …”


Priority is a Function•Priority decisions for backlog items

should be based on the current values of•Knowledge•Risk•Customer Value•Effort estimates


What goes in the Backlog?

Everything•Features/Stories, Chores,

Investigations, Interviews, Training, Conferences,….

•All demands of team capacity•Most (>50%) should be customer

value


Moving the K/R/CV Dials

•Clearly “User Stories” should increase Customer Value for the project

•What about some other examples?


Find a Buddy!

•Pair up for discussion


Quiz

•Which of Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value are changed by:

UX Prototypes


Quiz


A/B Testing with partial rollout


Quiz


Upgrading a Database (to latest)


Quiz


Technical Debt Reduction


Quiz


Send Team to User Conference


Game

•Let’s play a game…

•Pair, pair up (need group of 4)


Game

•Pick one to be the note taker•The other three are players


Game

•Rules for the note taker

•PLEASE ONLY NOTE TAKER READ


Game•You are the silent “observer”•Take notes on•Why someone feels the way they

do•Listen for motivation•Collaborations and trades•“so that …” “in order to…”


GameGoal: Your team must fill in this

sentence:“We want to order ______ for our main meal, and _____ for our dessert.”

Choose from:American, Italian, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Thai


Choice Modeling

•We just played a “game” based on the phycology of choice modeling


Rules for ObserverThese are the rules given to the observers:•Take notes on•Why someone feels the way they

do•Listen for motivation•Collaborations and trades•“so that …” “in order to…”


•Did you learn about each others preferences?


•Would you have learned as much by just asking individuals?


•Now, imagine playing this customers or stakeholders…


Buy a Featur

e


Buy a Feature•Innovation Games®•Collaborative Choice Modeling Market

Research•Limited money, work together to buy

•Output: game results, dialog/decisions, sense of buy-in, knowledge, …


Let’s Wrap Up


Concrete Reflective Tools

Tools which are immediately useful, generate feedback from their use, and are backed by their own guiding principles.


Buy a Featur

e

59


Great Advice…John Heintz

Founder, Gist LabsSenior Consultant, Cutter Consortium

[email protected] @jheintzhttp://gistlabs.com

mailto:[email protected]

Prioritize Your Backlog! Great Advice…

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