Prioritize Your Backlog! Great Advice…

1. Prioritize Your Backlog!Great Advice… John Heintz Founder, Gist Labs Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium john@gistlabs.com @jheintz http://gistlabs.com

2. 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

3. Ground Rules • Law of Two Feet: Quietly leave if you think your time would be better spent elsewhere • Interrupt me with Questions

4. Agile is great!! • But… Agile alone isn’t everything you need

5. Agile is great!! • But… Agile alone isn’t everything you need

6. Vapid “lacking liveliness, tang, briskness, or force” Merriam-Webster

7. Huh? “a nice sounding goal… that conveys no advice” me No clear how, or why

8. think desert mirage…

9. Let’s think of some examples…

10. Prioritize Your Backlog!

11. Retrospect!

12. Collaborate with your customers!

13. All of these:Really Good Ideas • You absolutely should be doing these • Most Agile classes, texts, experts say so

14. And Yet… • There is very little actual advice for how to do these things

15. 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

16. How I Judge Tools…

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

18. Concrete!

19. not Abstract This is “House in abstract landscape” by Franz Mark You saw that, right?

20. Hi, my name is John. I’m an INTJ

21. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is 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

22. Myers-Briggs Dichotomies Extraversion (E) - (I) Introversion Sensing (S) - (N) Intuition Thinking (T) - (F) Feeling Judgment (J) - (P) Perception

23. Sensing and intuition describe how new information is understood and interpreted.

24. 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.

25. Those who prefer intuition tend to trust information that is more abstract or theoretical, that can be associated with other information

26. Here's the kicker: it's not an even distribution. S-vs-N 73.2% is S, 26.8% is N You can easily lose over half your audience

27. Prioritize Your Backlog!

28. What is the Agile advice? Prioritize your backlog based on customer value

29. Prioritize Your Backlog! How do we measure customer value? What about other stakeholders?

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

31. Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value

32. Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value • Know a lot about your customers and solution • Keep your risks smaller than the total value of the solution • Grow customer value • GOTO 1

33. Validated Knowledge • Don’t just pretend to know something • “By what evidence …”

34. Priority is a Function • Priority decisions for backlog items should be based on the current values of • Knowledge • Risk • Customer Value • Effort estimates

35. What goes in the Backlog? Everything • Features/Stories, Chores, Investigations, Interviews, Training, Conferences,…. • All demands of team capacity • Most (>50%) should be customer value

36. Moving the K/R/CV Dials • Clearly “User Stories” should increase Customer Value for the project • What about some other examples?

37. Find a Buddy! • Pair up for discussion

38. Quiz • Which of Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value are changed by: UX Prototypes

39. Quiz • Which of Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value are changed by: A/B Testing with partial rollout

40. Quiz • Which of Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value are changed by: Upgrading a Database (to latest)

41. Quiz • Which of Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value are changed by: Technical Debt Reduction

42. Quiz • Which of Knowledge, Risk, Customer Value are changed by: Send Team to User Conference

43. Game • Let’s play a game… • Pair, pair up (need group of 4)

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

45. Game • Rules for the note taker • PLEASE ONLY NOTE TAKER READ

46. 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…”

47. Game Goal: 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

48. Choice Modeling • We just played a “game” based on the phycology of choice modeling

49. Rules for Observer These 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…”

50. Did you learn about each others preferences?