How to improve your digital product management with agility?
Software development is innovation. The uncertainty inherent to the discipline and the experimental nature of the actual building process has caused our team at Samsao — you might even say forced us — to embrace transparency.
Each client’s needs and each product’s requirements evolve, both during and after the initial phases. Staying agile is paramount. Otherwise, we will be slow to respond to sudden changes in the competitive landscape and the technologies themselves.
In order to maintain this mindset of constant optimization and practice of agility, we rely on four values:
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Creation of a functional product
- Adaptability to change
And in order to nurture them, we place great emphasis on having a great work culture. To give you the big picture, this is what it looks like:
- Building consensus among all stakeholders
- Encouraging collaboration (rather than anyone working in isolation)
- Over communicating so that we maximize each client’s ROI for our services.
What does success look like?
Our primary goal is to offer reliable products that consistently meet business objectives, at all times.
In order to achieve this goal with each client, we take an iterative approach to products: short development cycles, continuous refinement, and maximum flexibility to shuffle priorities and minimize risk.
Perfect code or meeting the deadlines is always what we aim for but, in our opinion, it is not the only parts in the definition of success. What success looks like is enough time, resources and people to identify the most viable solution, iterate quickly, and tightly control time and budget along the way.
Success is a process, not an outcome.
Liftoff sessions are a must.
That’s why we don’t dive into development right way. Instead, at the beginning of any project, we organize a liftoff with our clients.
A liftoff session has three primary objectives:
- Align the team vision
- Define how to deliver value quickly
- Know risks and obstacles
All stakeholders, anyone who will participate in the project in any way, attend the liftoff session. The document that are created during and after this meeting becomes the foundation for the product backlog so we can begin actual development. To learn more about the liftoff process, we highly recommend reading the book “Liftoff: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams” by Diana Larsen and Ainsley Nies.
What does development workflow look like at Samsao?
At Samsao, we have multidisciplinary teams working in a single workspace. This setup ensure effective communication and fosters an environment where a whole team shares the same project vision and can collaborate on a daily basis. The strength of a vision lies in its unity and solidarity.
Unless the team is unified around a common vision, we won’t be able to overcome the challenges of strategy, user experience, design, and application development.
We use a development framework called Scrum, which is based on agile values and principles. Scrum is a proven framework that can respond to the complex, ever-changing nature of develop while also delivering a final product of the highest possible value.
What does a team look like at Samsao?
Each of our teams consists of three roles:
Solution Team — This multidisciplinary team is responsible for the tasks performed during each iteration. Its members have expertise in strategy, development, ergonomics, design, and quality control.
Product Owner — The product owner is the client’s principal representative. He or she presents the vision to the solution team and vocalizes both the client’s as much as a user’s needs throughout the project. The product owner oversees the creation of the product backlog and grooms it during the project. During each iteration, the solution team presents the elements created to the product owner, who may choose to loop in other representatives on the client side.
Scrum Master — The scrum master serves as a facilitator. He or she ensures that all parties respect the processes and collaborate effectively. That way, the team as a whole can achieve the highest possible value for each iteration.
How does a development sprint work?
At Samsao, we work in 2 week development cycles, called sprints. At the beginning of each sprint, the product owner, representing Samsao’s client/customer, prepares a sprint backlog for the next iteration.
At the beginning of every sprint, the whole team sits down to plan the sprint. The product owner defines sprint objectives, and the solution teams organizes their sprint backlog for the coming sprint accordingly. If the workload related to the objectives is too high for a two-week sprint, the solution team communicates that to the product owner. Together, they adjust the objectives and thus the sprint backlog so that it can realistically fit what the solution team can deliver in a sprint.
In order to get a sense of the overall effort the team needs to make during the sprint, our glossary of terms has a special word for this: “velocity.” The velocity is calculated by totaling the number of points of fully completed user stories at the end of each sprint. The velocity not only helps the solution team plan their sprint, but also helps estimate the effort required for a new project or for the next phases of an on-going project.
What happens during a development sprint?
Every day, the solution team holds a short fifteen-minute team meeting called a daily scrum to discuss progress and ensure good communication and collaboration. At the same time, they will identify the obstacles that must be eliminated so that they can increase the likelihood of finishing the task list. This moment permits the team to evaluate whether or not they will reach the end of that sprint’s task list.
Once a week, the whole team attends a grooming session in order to refine the backlog and properly prepare the tasks the team will have to work on during the next sprint. The whole team goes through the acceptance criterias together and evaluates dependencies related to each user story in order to better define and prioritize them.
Throughout the sprint, the solution team continuously communicates with clients so that they always know what is going on. They share the sprint’s “burndown,” which shows the relationship between the amount of remaining work (or effort) and the time left in the sprint.
What happens after a development sprint?
Sometimes, the solution team gets to the end of the task list. Sometimes, they don’t. Regardless, each sprint results in the delivery of a functional product that the team presents to the client in the sprint review.
These reviews have multiple purposes. They ensure that 1) the product meets the client’s criteria for success and that 2) the product meets criteria for acceptance set out in the product backlog.
They also give the solution team an opportunity to demonstrate, by means of the prototypes, the proper functioning of different elements of the architecture. If things aren’t going according to plan, sprint reviews create opportunities for the team as a whole to adjust the vision and product backlog, as needed.
Following a review, the team participates in a retrospective where they takes stock of the last sprint and product iteration. They highlights any parts of the process that are working well, that need to be improved, or that need to be removed.
Transparency boosts productivity.
We took the time to write about our iterative, incremental workflow because we believe that transparency boosts productivity.
As a company, we have nothing to hide and we have everything to gain by learning as much as we can from each client and each project; successful development sprints and those whose velocity fell short of expectations.
Honest conversations about day-to-day workflow, as well as retrospectives and client feedback may sometimes be humbling.
But only by truly listening and applying what we learn can we improve. Only by improving can we turn our knowledge into wisdom and deliver more value and better solutions to our clients.
We believe that practicing transparency is the secret to building strong teams, and strong teams of course create better products.
