Requirements Craftsmanship - Agile or Beyond Agile?

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Holly BielawaDirector, Solution DeliveryTD Ameritrade

April 30, 2015

Requirements Craftsmanship:Agile, or Beyond Agile?

Speaker Highlights

• Scientist

• Early Stage Company Executive

• Menlo High-Tech Anthropologist

• Lean/Agile and Lean-Startup

• Enterprise Transformational Coach

• Agile Product Management

• Requirements Craftsman

About me….

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What Problems do we have yet to solve?

What problems are you trying to solve?

Is this a Problem?

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Agile

Scrum

Disciplined Agile Delivery

Agile Business

WaterfallScrummerfall

Stand-up

RetrospectiveTest-Driven Development

Unit Tests

Agile Project ManagementAgile Practices

Agile Requirements

The Scaled Agile Framework

Agile ScrumXtreme ProgrammingScrum Master

Product Owner

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Barriers to Requirements Craftsmanship:

1.Problem to Solve: Information is lost in the process.

2.Problem to Solve: We don’t know what problem this “feature” solves and for who?

3.Problem to Solve: We have to have everything in the release or we have nothing.

Communication Picture phone• Split into Groups of three

– Decide who you are (One, Two, and Three)• Take three Post-its and….

– Person One • Write a common phrase• Cover your phrase with a Post-it on Top• Pass to person TWO

– Person TWO• Read the phrase on the bottom Post-it• Draw a picture that is representative of the phrase.• Cover your picture with a blank Post-it note• Pass to person THREE

– Person THREE• Look ONLY at the picture from Person TWO• WRITE a phrase that represents the picture

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Communication is Tricky

904/15/2023Copywrite Cakewrecks.com

Automation is more efficient!

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Interpretation can Lead to Epic Failure

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BUILD THE

RIGHT THING

Product Management,

Sales, Marketing, Customers, Users,

Partners

BUILD THE

THING RIGHT

Cross-Functional Development

Teams (Develops and Testers)

Valuable

Requirement Craftsmanship Software Craftsmanship

The General Context for Success

Organizational Leadership and Enablement

1204/15/2023Holly Bielawa T4 – [email protected]

Spheres of Concern Requirement Craftsmanship…

User needs

What is feasible

What is valuable

Achieving Maximum Lifetime Value

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Maximize the work NOT done in the 80%.

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User WILL surprise you.

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“Project Junior”: New Amplifier Design

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Personas and Persona Mapping

Junior

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Project Junior Killer Feature

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgx4k83zzc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgx4k83zzc

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The Classic Requirements Conundrum

• Read the Requirements in front of you• What problem is being solved? Who are the

persona’s involved?• What is the value of these requirements?

How would you find out?

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What makes it a lot harder:

THE TOOLS OF REQUIREMENTS CRAFTSMANSHIP…

Why Requirements Craftsmanship

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The Tools Of Requirements Craftsmanship

This document contains confidential information for use by TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation and its subsidiaries.

What problem are we trying to solve?

Are the right people in the room?

What are we doing for whom and why?

What do we know?

What don’t we know?

Business Model Canvas, and Scenarios…

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Requirement Craftsmanship begins with the Big Picture:

The questions to ask during chartering:


Yogi Bear hears from the other bears that the yummiest peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are at the Ranger’s Cabin.

Yogi goes to the Ranger’s cabin to get the sandwiches so that he feels stuffed,

Yogi eats the sandwich in front of tourists who each pay$3.00 to see a wild bear close-up.

Example Scenario


Wile E. Coyote Googles “dynamite” and clicks on an ad for the best Road Runner terrorizing dynamite at ACME CO.

Wile E. lands on a page at the ACME website with a list of different dynamites and chooses a high-powered version with wheels and a long fuse, so that he can properly

terrorize the roadrunner.

Wile E. Coyote selects the Dynamite and buys though a secured website.

Scenario Example 2


___________ hears about our Product because ___________.

(Persona) (Channel)

She goes to our app so that she can ___________________. (Problem Statement)

___________ _____ finds ______________________ and

(Persona) (Solution to Problem)

_____________________ to our company.

(Business Value)

The Scenario Madlib


Who is our Primary User? (Persona and Persona Mapping)

How do we fit into their lives and what do they want (Journey Mapping and Scenarios)?

What is our Business Value Story?

As See - A- Bear Inc., if we provide a way for Yogi Bear to hear that yummy peanut butter sandwiches are at the ranger’s cabin, he’ll show up and stuff himself, and the tourist will pay us $3.00 a piece to see him.

Personas, Scenarios, and Value Stories…

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Creating a Value Story:

Your User Story Map is a result of these conversations:

4. STORY MAPPINGThe Best Tool EVER!

User Story Mapping is an approach to and Organizing and Prioritizing user stories into the User Workflow

29© Jeff Patton, all rights reserved, www.AgileProductDesign.com

Story Maps support communication, user story creation, high-level estimation, and gap analysis conversations in the case of legacy systems. They also provide the context for fast re-prioritization of features, epics, and user stories.

Incrementing: building all of one part at a time


1 2 3 4 5

Incrementing calls for a fully formed idea.

And, doing it on time requires dead accurate estimation. (which is impossible, by the way).

Iterating: Planning to make changes to perfect the product over time.


1 2 3

A more iterative approach allows you to move from general high-level idea, to collaboration and execution with a software team, making course corrections as you go.

But you can still fall into bad habits….

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Example: Sandy’s Idea

• Sandy has been staying at home while her kids are small. She is facing a decision about whether she can afford to stay home, or if she will have to go to work outside the home.

• She has been making handbags while her children are napping. People love the handbags and she has sold a few to friends. If she can sell them online she may make enough money work flexibly from home.

• Sandy and her husband agree that they will invest 3 months and $5000.00 to test whether she can sell her handbags online.

HOW CAN SHE DO THIS IN ONLY THREE MONTHS?

Enter Lisa – Handbag aficionado and Sandy’s Primary Persona

User Goal: Lisa I want to buy a handbag online so that I

can express my individuality.

• How do we make sure that we build everything needed, but not more. After all, Sandy only has a limited amount of time and budget to get Lisa to buy from her website.

Sandy’s Value Story

If I provide Lisa a way to buy my handbags online, then she will feel she has a source for unique handbags, and I will be able to make money while having

the flexibility of working from home.

….She only has $5000 and 3 months to make it happen.

Activity 3

• Using the cards provided, assemble a story map into a spine and stories

Time

Necessit

y

Lisa sees a home page

Lisa Finds a handbag

Lisa Selects a Handbag

Lisa views her cart

Lisa buys a handbag

She sees a company logo

She sees a search boxShe sees thumbnailsShe sees side navigationShe sees an animation ad

She can searchShe can browseShe can scroll a list

She double clicks on a bagShe clicks a box to add to cart

She drags a bag to add to cartShe can select multiple handbags

Lisa sees the bags she has selectedShe can see a sub-total

She can select a shipping method

She can purchase with a credit cardShe buys through PaypalShe can select pay by check

She can input a purchase order

She can change quantities

The Spine Shows Activities the User Must Complete

Lisa sees a home page

Time

Necessit

y

Lisa Finds a handbag

Lisa Selects a Handbag

Lisa views her cart

Lisa buys a handbag

She sees a company logo

She sees a search box

She sees thumbnailsShe sees side navigationShe sees an animation ad

She can searchShe can browse

She can scroll a list

She double clicks on a bag

She clicks a box to add to cart

She drags a bag to add to cartShe can select multiple handbags

Lisa sees the bags she has selectedShe can see a sub-total

She can select a shipping method

She can purchase with a credit card

She buys through Paypal

She can select pay by check

She can input a purchase order

She can change quantities

She can click on “Purchase”

Test and Validate and you go (MVT to MVP)

Two months later, Sandy launches her handbag website. “Lisas” all over the world started buying handbags two

weeks later. What if she wants to add the ability for Lisa to sell artisan

items on the website?

User Stories – a quick Primer

Only the developers will know when you have a user story.

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Requirements Craftsmanship

• A Collaborative Team Effort• Centered around what problem you are

solving for who.• Negotiable until deployment to create

flexibility and negotiation of factors. (User, Competition, Sales Cycle, Market etc )

• Expressed yourself in Estimable, Valuable User Stories

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Resources

• User Story Mapping (Jeff Patton)• The Inmates are running the Asylum (Persona Mapping)

• (Alan Cooper)• User Story Writing

• (Mike Cohn)• eXtreme Programming Explained

• (Kent Beck) • The Principles of Product Development Flow

• (Don Reinertsen)• Agile Chartering (also online resources)

• (David Husseman)

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Questions?

Requirements Craftsmanship - Agile or Beyond Agile?

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