Steps to a successful agile tech inception

Inceptions

“They’ve been locked up in that room for weeks, posts-its all over the wall, munching on unhealthy snacks…..what are they doing in there?”

“Probably incepting”

Sound familiar?

There is a lot of talk in our company (Compare The Market) and in industry about Inceptions being the fundamental component to any epic that is considered a substantial piece of work for a tech team. This blog aims to articulate what an inception is and isn’t, learnings and guidelines.

So let’s start at the beginning, what is an Inception?

Good question.

An inception is the process that tech teams should go through to better understand the requirements of a project brief, specifically for epics/large pieces of work. Typically the Business Analyst within the agile team owns the Inception process, which involves a number of key steps (here at Compare The Market it is driven by our ‘Just how we roll’ process) that will be discussed later in this blog.

Why have inceptions?

Well, according to The Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process framework, an explicit inception phase is absolutely necessary for large projects.

Inceptions should be held to align all stakeholders and teams who are part of the projects delivery and decision making process. The benefit of doing this enables those involved to leave the process with a common understanding of the work and the approach that will be taken, it will highlight any blockers and dependencies — but most importantly it will question whether taking the project forward is the right thing to do for the business and our customers.

We must not go into an inception assuming that the project is automatically a ‘Go’, it could be the inception process determines it would have a negative impact on the business or our customers and so should be abandoned or rethought. That is considered a far better outcome than starting a project and wasting time and effort.

I know what you’re thinking……Most of the time the projects are driven by decisions outside of our control and so saying ‘no’ is not really an option. Sure, this happens and sometimes there are decisions made by stakeholders that require a JDI approach, however, for something that is an epic and will cost the company a substantial amount of money, in true agile fashion we should be empowered to present the facts and explain why certain conclusions have been made.

What is a typical inception process at Compare The Market?

The detail provided in this section is not designed to dictate how an inception should be undertaken but rather formulate a view on the steps that typically make up the process. In certain situations, some of these steps may vary in order, however they are considered important milestones of any inception that will inevitably happen at some point.

1. Documenting the Customer Value Proposition (CVP) to better understand what the project is trying to achieve. This high level document gives the team an opportunity to discuss the brief, understand the benefits for customers and business, as well as identifying some general assumptions for cost and size.

The Business Analyst should lead these discussions with the rest of the product team, involving the product owner and anyone with an invested interest.

This document is then shared with the product team and tech directors to ensure they have a view of the project before the scoping sessions begin.

So the CVP has been shared… what now?

2. Drafting a business case is the next logical stage in this process. The Business Analyst within the team should lead this involving the Project Manager, Tech Lead, Product Owner and anyone else with invested interest. The business case lives in JIRA and should contain (as minimum):

• Summary of the project
• Key performance indicators (KPI’s)
• Measures of success
• CVP
• Financial and non-financial benefits
• Project delivery costs (staff/technology)
• Risks and dependencies

For any project that contains multiple epics, our commercial finance team ask that there be an overarching business case linking the individual business cases together.

When the business case(s) are in a good place, they can be sent to commercial finance and the tech directors to review. This is not the final nor definitive business case, it can be amended post inception if anything changes.

Okay, so we’ve got our project brief, we’ve drafted a CVP and business case, it must be time to dive into Inception workshops now? Well not quite.. You first need to plan..

3. Inception workshop planning is an extremely important part of the process. This is a planning session between those who can influence the agenda items that should be considered. The output of this session should give you:

• A list of stakeholders that need to be involved in the inception workshops
• The workshops that need to be held, including order of priority
• Agenda items for the identified workshops
• Any pre-inception workshop work that needs to be done (E.g gap analysis, learnings, training etc)
• Identified blockers
• Meeting rooms booked to hold the workshops including any equipment that is needed

Now we’re ready for the inception workshops…

4. There is no right or wrong content that should be covered in inception workshops as they are specific to the project, however there are a few common elements that should be considered. The techniques used for extracting this information may vary by Business Analyst:

• Problem/Objective statements
• Agreed KPI’s and measures of success
• Identifying project goals, intentions and vision
• Scope
• AS-IS/TO-BE requirements
• UX/CX journeys
• Tech solution and architecture
• Project approach and delivery plan (e.g phased, delivering MVP first)
• T-shirt sizing
• Amendments to the business case where required
• Agreed next steps/actions

Typically, they last anywhere between 2–4 weeks in CTM, however there is no ideal, it is really what suits the team to get them to their desired outcome.

When all the detail of the inception has been captured and shared with those that require it, it’s time to showcase your project (jazz hands please).

5. An Inception showcase meeting invite at Compare The market goes out to all staff in the business. The Business Analyst is responsible for holding this session and can enlist the help of other members of the team should they wish. Typically, a showcase can last anywhere between 30mins to an hour depending on how big the project is, and should cover at minimum:

• Summary of the project
• Benefits and KPI’s
• Measures of success
• Structure and playback of the inception workshops
• Scope
• Tech solution
• Milestone/phased approach
• Any overlap or dependencies on other teams
• Q&A’s

Outlook on inceptions

Since the dawn of Inceptions at Compare The Market there has been some mis-conception on what they are and how they should be used. The BA community have been working hard to standardise the process and embed inceptions into our project practices.

The aim is that this becomes a part of our norm, teams embrace inceptions into their epic routine and find benefit in doing so.