A user story is one way of representing requirements in a Product Backlog. Mike Cohn defines a user story as a simple, clear and short description of customer valued functionality. It is composed of 3 parts: a written description used for planning, conversation to flesh out the details, and tests to determine completeness. Similarly, Ron Jefferies…
At AgileDC2015, I presented on Lean Discovery, Agile Delivery and a DevOps mindset. Below is the abstract of the talk, along with links to the Digital Service Delivery blog series and the presentation slides. Abstract: More and more organizations and teams are adopting Agile, however most stay focused on just the development part. They maintain a…
This post summarizes the Digital Service Delivery blog series by focusing on 10 essentials for successfully using Lean Discovery practices, Agile Delivery techniques and a DevOps mindset to build solutions our customers love. Lean Discovery practices help us ensure that the solutions we are building are not only viable from a business perspective and feasible from…
To truly succeed in Lean Discovery and Agile Delivery practices and techniques, an organization must adopt an Agile and DevOps mindset. This is more than technical practices to automate our deployments. This requires a culture change aligned with Agile values and principles. This culture change is about focusing on continuously delivering high value working features on a…
In the Lean Discovery blog we saw how these practices help us narrow our focus on an MVP and ensure we are building the right thing. Agile Delivery practices help us build the thing right. Moreover, nothing beats true validated learning than having a feature released to a subset of our user base and measuring specific…
Lean Discovery Practices help us validate our MVP to ensure we are building the right thing. Eric Ries, author of Lean Startup, reminds us that “The big question of our time is not can it be built, but should it be built?”Eric Ries To know that, we have to go through quick build, measure, and learn…
The Agile value proposition is about early delivery of business value, reduced risk, increased visibility and increased adaptability. These are achieved by continuously delivering customer valued functionality by building MVP (minimal viable products) and MMF (minimal marketable features). The terms MVP or MMF are often used interchangeably, but are they really the same thing and if…
There are many problems organizations face in delivering digital solutions and products. These problems might be due to the long concept to deployment cycles and the lack of feedback loops in our traditional waterfall software development approach. To solve these problems, organizations decide to go Agile and take and iterative and incremental approach to software development.…
Delivering Digital Services to our stakeholders and customers is hard and the overall industry success rates are dismal. The reasons are many, but some of the most common problems are below. Do any of these sound familiar? Long and painful testing cycles: After months and months of coding an application, the team declares it done (but…
The term Digital Services refers to the electronic delivery of information including data and content across multiple platforms and devices like web or mobile. Information is presented in a way that is easy to use and understand and typically involves transactional services such as submitting forms for processing and receiving benefits. Think of applying for a…
Check out the video below of Sam Guckenhiemer presenting "Journey to Cloud Cadence" at Agile2014. Guckenhiemer describes a ten-year transformation at Microsoft Developer Division from a waterfallian box product delivery cycle of four years to Agile practices enabling a hybrid SaaS and on-prem business, with a single code base, triweekly delivery of new features in the…
Check out the video below of Diana Larsen presenting "Best Job Ever" at Agile2014. Diana calls on you to remember the everyday felt experiences of many early Agile teams that learned to love their work again. Early teams and practitioners focused on Agile as an opportunity to make things better for themselves, their customers, and their…
Check out the video below of Bjarte Bogsnes presenting on "Beyond Budgeting - An Agile Management Model for New Business and People Realities - The Statoil Implementation Journey" at Agile2014. Bjarte discusses the problems with traditional management, including budgeting and explores the Beyond Budgeting principles, redefining performance, dynamic forecasting and resource allocation. https://vimeo.com/154728120 Beyond Budgeting by…
Check out the video below of Gene Kim presenting on "Why Everyone Needs DevOps Now" at Agile2013. Gene Kim has been studying high-performing IT organizations since 1999. He is the author of the highly acclaimed “Visible Ops Handbook,” “The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win,” and was founder and CTO…
Check out the video below of Tim Lister presenting on "Forty Years of Trying to Play Well with Others" at Agile2013. Tim describes his work as a colleague, as an apprentice, as a mentor, and as a mediator. Tim describes how team dynamics have changed over the years, and how they bring new challenges to tight…