Monthly Archives: August 2014

Agile Engineering, Agile Management, How-To Apply Agile, Scrum, XP and Lean

Technical Push-Back – When is it Okay? When is it Bad?

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Whenever I run a Certified Scrum Product Owner training session, one concept stands out as critical for participants: the relationship of the Product Owner to the technical demands of the work being done by the Scrum team.

The Product Owner is responsible for prioritizing the Product Backlog. This responsibility is, of course, also matched by their authority to do so. When the Product Owner collaborates with the team in the process of prioritization, there may be ways which the team “pushes back”. There are two possible reasons for push-back. One is good, one is bad.

Bad Technical Push-Back

BudapestDSCN3928-smallThe team may look at a product backlog item or a user story and say “O gosh! There’s a lot there to think about! We have to build this fully-architected infrastructure before we can implement that story.” This is old waterfall thinking. It is bad. The team should always be thinking (and doing) YAGNI and KISS. Technical challenges should be solved in the simplest responsible way. Features should be implemented with the simplest technical solution that actually works.

As a Product Owner, one technique that you can use to help teams with this is that when the team asks questions, that you aggressively keep the user story as simple as possible. The questions that are asked may lead to the creation of new stories, or splitting the existing story. Here is an example…

Suppose the story is “As a job seeker I can post my resume to the web site…” If the technical team makes certain assumptions, they may create a complex system that allows resumes to be uploaded in multiple formats with automatic keyword extraction, and even beyond that, they may anticipate that the code needs to be ready for edge cases like WordPerfect format.  The technical team might also assume that the system needs a database schema that includes users, login credentials, one-to-many relationships with resumes, detailed structures about jobs, organizations, positions, dates, educational institutions, etc. The team might insist that creating a login screen in the UI is an essential prerequisite to allowing a user to upload their resume.  And as for business logic, they might decide that in order to implement all this, they need some sort of standard intermediate XML format that all resumes will be translated into so that searching features are easier to implement in the future.

It’s all CRAP, bloat and gold-plating.

Because that’s not what the Product Owner asked for.  The thing that’s really difficult for a team of techies to get with Scrum is that software is to be built incrementally.  The very first feature built is built in the simplest responsible way without assuming anything about future features.  In other words, build it like it is the last feature you will build, not the first.  In the Agile Manifesto this is described as:

Simplicity, the art of maximizing the amount of work not done, is essential.

The second feature the team builds should only add exactly what the Product Owner asks for.  Again, as if it was going to be the last feature built.  Every single feature (User Story / Product Backlog Item) is treated the same way.  Whenever the team starts to anticipate the business in any of these three ways, the team is wrong:

  1. Building a feature because the team thinks the Product Owner will want it.
  2. Building a feature because the Product Owner has put it later on the Product Backlog.
  3. Building a technical aspect of the system to support either of the first types of anticipation, even if the team doesn’t actually build the feature they are anticipating.

Okay, but what about architecture?  Fire your architects.  No kidding.¹

Good Technical Push-Back

Rube Goldberg Self Operating Napkin

Sometimes stuff gets non-simple: complicated, messy, hard to understand, hard to change.  This happens despite us techies all being super-smart.  Sometimes, in order to implement a new feature, we have to clean up what is already there.  The Product Owner might ask the Scrum Team to build this Product Backlog Item next and the team says something like: “yes, but it will take twice as long as we initially estimated, because we have to clean things up.”  This can be greatly disappointing for the Product Owner.  But, this is actually the kind of push-back a Product Owner wants.  Why?  In order to avoid destroying your business!  (Yup, that serious.)

This is called “Refactoring” and it is one of the critical Agile Engineering practices.  Martin Fowler wrote a great book about this about 15 years ago.  Refactoring is, simply, improving the design of your system without changing it’s business behaviour.  A simple example is changing a set of 3 radio buttons in the UI to a drop-down box with 3 options… so that later, the Product Owner can add 27 more options.  Refactoring at the level of code is often described as removing duplication.  But some types of refactoring are large: replacing a relational database with a NoSQL database, moving from Java to Python for a significant component of your system, doing a full UX re-design on your web application.  All of these are changes to the technical attributes of your system that are driven by an immediate need to add a new feature (or feature set) that is not supported by the current technology.

The Product Owner has asked for a new feature, now, and the team has decided that in order to build it, the existing system needs refactoring.  To be clear: the team is not anticipating that the Product Owner wants some feature in the future; it’s the very next feature that the team needs to build.

This all relates to another two principles from the Agile Manifesto:

Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

and

The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

In this case, the responsibilities of the team for technical excellence and creating the best system possible override the short-term (and short-sighted) desire of the business to trade off quality in order to get speed.  That trade-off always bites you in the end!  Why? Because of the cost of fixing quality problems increases exponentially as time passes from when they were introduced.

Young Girl Wiping Face With Napkin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Refactoring is not a bad word.

Keep your code clean.

Let your team keep its code clean.

Oh.  And fire your architects.

Update Sep. 8, 2015: Check out this YouTube video on the closely related topic of who has authority over the Product Backlog and why developers should not set the order of PBIs:

¹ I used to be a senior architect reporting directly to the CTO of Charles Schwab.  Effectively, I fired myself and launched an incredibly successful enterprise architecture re-write project… with no up-front architecture plan.  Really… fire your architects.  Everything they do is pure waste and overhead.  Someday I’ll write that article 🙂

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Agile Management, How-To Apply Agile

Theoretical Team Member Allocation Adjustment for Team Capacity Adaptation Projections Game: Adaptive Planning for Adjusted Team Capacity in Scrum

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Author’s caveat:

Lots of smart people have already come up with lots of ways of doing adaptive planning, and chances are someone has already come up with some variation of this particular approach. I have not yet had the benefit of reading everything that everyone else has already written about Agile and planning, so this has been generated by my own experiential learning on the ground as an Agile coach.  Sometimes, as a ScrumMaster/Agile Coach, you are called upon to be a two-trick pony.  This is my other trick.

 Requirements for team estimation (and planning):

  • Product Owner
  • The whole Development Team (i.e. everyone who will be involved in doing the work)
  • Product Backlog
  • Definition of “Done”

 When team membership changes:

A Scrum Team that is estimating effort against Product Backlog items for project planning and timeline projections and changes team membership for one or more Sprints must also re-estimate the remaining items (or at least the items that will be part of the Sprints in which the different/additional team members are expected to participate) regardless of estimation method (Agile Planning Poker or otherwise). The people involved in doing the work (Development Team members/Sprint) must also be involved in providing team estimates. The Development Team is responsible for all estimates as a whole team and therefore should provide estimates as a whole team. The Planning Poker game is widely understood by Agile experts and successful Agile teams as the best tool for facilitating team estimation. Part of what makes Planning Poker so effective is that it does not only provide accurate timelines, but it also facilitates knowledge-sharing among team members as everyone on the team is required to endeavor to understand the degree of complexity of the work of all other team members in order to deliver each item according to the team’s Definition of “Done”.

When team member allocation is adjusted:

Sometimes, the Development team will have people partially dedicated to the team. After one or two Sprints, it becomes apparent that full dedication of all Development Team members is required for optimal team performance. As result, management can be assisted to reconsider allocation of team members towards 100% dedication to the work of a single Scrum Team. Increased (or decreased) dedication of team members can also be expected to have a corresponding impact on velocity (effort points completed per Sprint). However, the Scrum Master needs to help the team (and their managers) to be careful to avoid planning against the unknown. Scrum allows a team to adapt based on actual historical data. Therefore, planning against minimum historical velocity is strongly recommended as a general best practice. At the same time, if a team starts off with, say, 50% allocation of team members and management decides to bump it up to 100%, it is fairly safe to assume that you will actually get somewhat more out of the team. How much more is never possible to know, as human beings are reliably incapable of predicting the future. The moderate way to approach this is to plan the next Sprint based on previous velocity, finish the planned work early in the Sprint, get a bunch of “extra” stuff done, then calculate velocity of the new and improved team and plan against the new and improved velocity. This allows the team to adapt to actuals and not be blind-sided by unforeseen impediments/bottlenecks.

Sometimes, there is a need for management to get a sense of how much more velocity the team will get from increased team member allocation in order to feel that an informed decision has been made. There is a simple (though not risk-free) method for doing this that I have whipped up after being put on the spot on several occasions. I have decided to call this the Theoretical Team Member Allocation Adjustment for Team Capacity Adaptation Projections Game.

WARNING:

The purpose of this exercise is to provide decision-makers with a sense of how much they are going to get out of adjusted allocation of team members to Scrum Teams. Scrum Teams perform optimally when all team members are 100% dedicated to the team. This game should be used with caution and as a means to help organizations move closer to 100% dedication of all Scrum Team members (at least all Development Team members) and, therefore, eliminate the need for this game. Great care should be taken to not encourage perpetuation of dysfunctional Waterfall habits such as “we will now go twice as fast and get done twice as early with twice the allocation of resources because we have this shiny new crystal ball called Theoretical Team Member Allocation Adjustment for Team Capacity Adaptation Projections Game that tells us so.” As long as no one believes that this is magic, it is likely safe enough to proceed to Step 1.

Step 1 – What is our current velocity?

After the first Sprint, the team should be able to count up the number of Product Backlog items completed and add up the corresponding number of “Effort Points” established during its initial estimation (Planning Poker) sessions. Let’s say for our example that the number completed for Sprint 1 is 21 Effort Points. Therefore, the current velocity of the team is 21. Let’s say that this is not a comfortable realization for the team because at some point in the past it had been estimated that this project would take the team about 5 Sprints to complete. Now, the team has done 21 points in the first Sprint and the total number of Effort Points on the Product Backlog estimated by the team is just under 210. Uh oh… 10 Sprints! Whoops! Now what do we do?! Are the new estimation values wrong? Should we stick to the 5 weeks and just have everyone work overtime on this project? Should we take this to management? Let’s say that this team decides to take it to management. But what if management needs more information than “team velocity = 21, Product Backlog = 210, therefore it’s going to take us 10 Sprints instead of 5”? Never fear, Theoretical Team Member Allocation Adjustment for Team Capacity Adaptation Projections Game is here!

Step 2 – What is our current capacity?

As part of Sprint Planning, the team needs to have a sense of its capacity in order to create the Sprint Goal and Sprint Backlog. Therefore, the team should already have a sense of its own capacity. Let’s say for our example that the (fictional) Development Team had the following projected allocation for the first Sprint:

50%        Chris P. Codemuncher

50%        Larry Legassifulunch

25%        Beth Breaksidal

40%        Gertrude Gamesthadox

40%        Dana Deadlinedryver

The team is doing 2-week Sprints. After calculating the time that the team has allocated for Scrum Events, the remaining time for doing the work of the Sprint is about 8.5 days. Therefore, we can calculate the total allocated days per team member as such:

8.5 x 50% = 4.25 days    Chris P. Codemuncher

8.5 x 50% = 4.25 days    Larry Legassifulunch

8.5 x 25% = 2.13 days    Beth Breaksidal

8.5 x 40% = 3.4 days      Gertrude Gamesthadox

8.5 x 40% = 3.4 days      Dana Deadlinedryver

17.43                              Total combined available days per Sprint

Let’s round that down to 17. That’s the number used by the team to understand its capacity for Sprint Planning. This is a powerful number for other reasons than what we are trying to get at here, but they are worth pointing out nonetheless. For generating the Sprint Backlog in Sprint Planning, this is particularly useful if each task in the Sprint Backlog is a maximum of a one-person-day. Therefore, this team should have a minimum of 17 tasks in the Sprint Backlog and these tasks should all be a one-person-day or less amount of effort. If the team has more than 17 tasks which are all about a one-person-day of effort, chances are the team has overcommitted and will fail to deliver the Sprint Goal. This should trigger the adaptation of the Sprint Goal. In any case, it provides the team with simple transparency that can easily be inspected and adapted throughout the Sprint. For example, with one-person day tasks, each team member should be able to move at least one task into the “Done” position every day and point to that movement every day during the Daily Scrum. Also, this team should be burning down at least 5 tasks every day. If either of these fails to occur, this is a clear signal for the team to inspect and adapt.

Now, let’s get back to our Theoretical Team Member Allocation Adjustment for Team Capacity Adaptation Projections Game. As a result of Steps 1 & 2 we now know that the team’s velocity is 21 Effort Points and that the team’s capacity is 17 person-days per Sprint. For short, we can say:

21            Velocity

17            Capacity

21/17       V/C

(WARNING: This number is dangerous when in the wrong hands and used as a management metric for team performance)

 Step 3 – How much capacity do we hope to have in the next Sprint?

Let’s say a friendly manager comes along and says “you know what, I want to help you guys get closer to your original wishful thinking of 5 Sprints. Therefore, I’m deciding to allocate more of certain team members’ time to this project. Unfortunately, I can only help you with the ‘developers’, because everyone else reports to other managers. I’m concerned that Beth is going to become a bottleneck, so someone should also speak with her manager. But for now, let’s bump Chris up to 100% and Larry up to 75% and see what that does for you. We’re also going to throw in another ‘specialist developer’ that you need for some stuff in your Product Backlog at 100%. How much more velocity can I get for that?”

Okay. So…more allocation = more capacity = more velocity, right? If we acknowledge that this is highly theoretical, and remember the initial WARNING of the game, we can proceed with caution…

But just as we get started on calculating the adjusted allocation of team members, we find out that Beth was actually more like 50% allocated, Dana was more like 15% allocated and Gertrude was more like 30% allocated. We need to recalculate our actuals for Sprint 1:

8.5 x 50% = 4.25 days    Chris P. Codemuncher

8.5 x 50% = 4.25 days    Larry Legassifulunch

8.5 x 50% = 4.25 days     Beth Breaksidal

8.5 x 30% = 2.55 days     Gertrude Gamesthadox

8.5 x 15% = 1.28 days     Dana Deadlinedryver

16.58                               Total combined ACTUAL available days in Sprint 1

16                                    Actual capacity (rounded-down)

21/16                               Actual V/C

As a side note, Beth had to work on a Saturday in order to increase her capacity but she spoke with her manager and thinks that from now on she will probably be able to maintain this degree of dedication to the team without having to work any more overtime.

Now the team can calculate its hoped-for capacity for Sprint 2 and beyond:

8.5 x 100% = 8.5 days     Sally Supaspeshalis

8.5 x 100% = 8.5 days     Chris P. Codemuncher

8.5 x 75% = 6.38 days     Larry Legassifulunch

8.5 x 50% = 4.25 days     Beth Breaksidal

8.5 x 30% = 2.55 days     Gertrude Gamesthadox

8.5 x 0% = 0 days            Dana Deadlinedryver

(Note: Dana is also the Scrum Master with plenty of other work to do for the team)

30.18                               Total combined hoped-for available days in Sprint 1

30                                     Hoped-for capacity (rounded-down)

Step 4 – How much velocity do we hope to have in the next Sprint?

21            Actual Historical Velocity

16            Actual Historical Capacity

30            Hoped-For Future Capacity

x              Hoped-For Future Velocity

Some simple math, loaded with assumptions:

Actual Historical Velocity/Actual Historical Capacity = Hoped-For Future Velocity/Hoped-For Future Capacity

Therefore if 21/16 = x/30, then x = 21 x 30/16 = 39.375

39            Hoped-For Future Velocity

Step 5 – How do we adapt our planning in light of what we now know (assuming we now know something substantial enough to inform our planning)?

Hopefully, not much. The best thing for the team to do at this point is to plan against its actual historical velocity of 21. If team members finish their work in the Sprint Backlog early, they should help out with other tasks until the Sprint Goal is delivered. Then, if the team achieves the Sprint Goal early and has extra time left before the end of the Sprint, then the team can pull additional items to work on from the Product Backlog. If the velocity of the team actually increases as a result of actual increased capacity, then the team can safely plan against its increased velocity beginning in Sprint 3. However, Hoped-For Future Velocity is often way too tantalizing for a team that already strongly (and to some extent, logically) believes that it can get more done with more capacity. So, most teams will usually plan to do more in light of this knowledge and that’s fine. Scrum allows them to inspect and adapt this plan at least every day. The team will figure it out.

Thank you for playing Theoretical Team Member Allocation Adjustment for Team Capacity Adaptation Projections Game. I hope it was as fun to play as it was to create!

See you next time,

Travis.

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Agile Management, How-To Apply Agile, Professional Development, Scrum, XP and Lean

Full-Day Product Owner Simulation Exercise

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This Product Owner Simulation exercise rests on the idea that people learn a lot better by doing something than by talking about it.  My Product Owner classes were getting great reviews, but I really felt like there was something missing compared to my ScrumMaster classes which have a full-day ScrumMaster simulation exercise.  It took a little while to figure it out, but this article describes in detail how I do the simulation for the Product Owner class.  I’m sure it will evolve and get refined from here since I have only used the simulation twice so far.

UPDATE: 2016-08-14 – major updates to the Product Owner Simulation after having used it at least 15 times since this was originally written!

UPDATE: 2017-07-13 – minor updates including new versions of handouts that better explain some concepts, and slightly expanded facilitator’s notes.

NOTE: Permission to use this exercise / print associated materials is granted with a simple request: please link to this page on your blog, in a LinkedIn group or Google group, like it on Facebook etc. or write a comment in our comments section!

Pre-requisites: None!  No prior Scrum or Agile knowledge or experience required.  However, it is recommended that participants have an introduction to Scrum or have read the Scrum Guide.

Audience: Product Owners, Business Analysts, Project Managers, Product Managers and other people responsible for business results and who interact with a Scrum team.

Timing: This simulation takes at least 7 classroom hours.  I usually run it from 8:30am to 5:00pm with a one hour lunch break and two 15 minute breaks during the day.

Materials Needed:

  • Coloured pencils and/or coloured markers
  • Black Sharpie fine-point markers
  • Scissors
  • Rulers
  • Scotch tape and/or glue stick
  • Blank white printer paper
  • Pencils, erasers, pencil sharpeners
  • Blank white 4×6 and 3×5 note cards
  • Blank white box (e.g. a shirt box from U-Line) or foam core boards (see photo)
  • Planning Game cards (email me if you want a bunch for free!)

Product Owner Simulation - Product Box Example

Room Setup: Round tables with 5 to 7 chairs at each table.  Materials distributed to each table.

Product Owner Simulation Agenda

(with facilitator’s notes in red)

Introduction to the Product Owner Simulation

  1. Lecture: Simulation Overview, Backlog Preparation and Refinement
    The purpose of the overall simulation is to learn to create a good Product Backlog in preparation for a Scrum team’s first Sprint.  Many of the techniques we explore will also be useable in ongoing Product Backlog Refinement.  Review the agenda with participants.
  2. Exercise: Great Products and their Vision
    5 minutes – at table groups, think about the physical consumer products you know and use often.  How are those products marketed and sold?  How are they presented?  How do you decide to use that product vs. a competitive product?  Make sure you discuss specific products rather than corporate brands or product categories.
  3. Discussion: What Makes a Great Product Vision?
    Ask for the group to brainstorm the qualities of a great product vision.  Ensure that “simplicity”, “urgency”, and “emotion” are all mentioned.  (Great reference: “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip and Dan Heath.)
  4. Discussion: Choosing a Product for the Simulation
    Give participants three product options (suggested options: “Doggy dating web site”, “iPad app for plastic surgeons’ medical and practice management”, “POS for food trucks with social features”).  A table group must agree to one of the options.  They will stick with this product for the remainder of the simulation.  Three minutes to decide.

Product Vision

Remind participants that in Scrum, we don’t necessarily do all the steps of the simulation in any particular order. Instead, we are practicing techniques that can come into use at various times. The Product Owner Simulation must be done in a particular order. The techniques are all part of the overall process of Product Backlog Refinement.

  1. Exercise: Product Vision Statement
  2. 5 minutes – attempt to craft a brief, compelling product vision statement that communicates “simplicity”, “urgency” and “emotion”. The audience of the product vision statement is your Scrum Team (NOT customers).  Debrief by hearing from each group, then asking if the three characteristics have been communicated.
  3. Handout: Product Vision in Context [PDF]
  4. Lecture: Explain the Product Vision handout and ask for questions, insights.  At this time, highlight the differences between a “product” and a “project”.  Emphasize the concept that a product has customers who pay money and who have choice about what they buy, and that those customers are outside of your organization.  Possible discussion about Scrum being ideally suited for Product Development vs. project management or operations.
  5. Reference: Innovation Games – Product Box [site]
  6. Handout: Product Box Innovation Game [PDF]
  7. Lecture: Product Box
    Talk about the need for a compelling vision as a pre-requisite for high-performance teams, and a way to decide what is in vs. out of a Product Backlog.  Introduce “Product Box” as a way to do market research in an Agile compatible way (collaborative, light documentation, quick).  Talk about the pattern of a product box: front to attract, back to showcase, sides to deal with objections.  Use of online resources / web research is allowed but should not dominate the exercise.
  8. Exercise: Building Your Product
    30 minutes, with warnings at 15 minutes and 5 minutes remaining.  Ensure that by 10 minutes in, the group has actually started using the craft supplies and isn’t just talking.
  9. Exercise: Presenting Your Product
    5 minutes – give additional time to allow groups to prepare for a trade show (in their market) presentation where other groups (or yourself) will role-play sceptical trade show participants.
  10. Discussion: Debrief Product Box
    Focus on feasibility of using Product Box in real life, the power of metaphor, and the power of collaboration.
  11. Exercise: Product Vision Statement Reprise
    5 minutes – attempt to craft a brief, compelling product vision statement that communicates “simplicity”, “urgency” and “emotion”.
  12. Discussion: Debrief by hearing new Product Vision Statements.

Product Users

Remind participants that in Scrum, we don’t necessarily do all the steps of the simulation in any particular order. Instead, we are practicing techniques that can come into use at various times. The Product Owner Simulation must be done in a particular order. The techniques are all part of the overall process of Product Backlog Refinement.

  1. Handout: User Categories Thinking Tool [PDF]
  2. Lecture: User Categories
    Describe “users we sell”, “users who pay” and “admin users” as the three major categories.  Users can be in hierarchies where a general user type may have two or more specific sub-types.
  3. Exercise: Identifying Users
    10 minutes.  One user of each main type, at least 5 users in total.  More is okay.
  4. Handout: Persona [PDF]
  5. Lecture: Personas, Usability and Empathy
    Introduce Persona concept (great reference: “The Inmates are Running the Asylum” by Alan Cooper).  Usability as part of Agile, not separate (i.e. “working software”).  Identifying personas as a way to build empathy from the development team to the end users/customers.
  6. Exercise: Generate a Persona
    10 minutes.  Choose a primary user.  Generate name, age, background story, and relationship to product.  Find an image from a stock photography site.  Important: do at least a little bit of research and tie some part of your persona to that research!  Try to be specific and write the background so it emphasizes the concept of empathy.

Business Value

Remind participants that in Scrum, we don’t necessarily do all the steps of the simulation in any particular order. Instead, we are practicing techniques that can come into use at various times. The Product Owner Simulation must be done in a particular order. The techniques are all part of the overall process of Product Backlog Refinement.

  1. Lecture: Good and Bad Metrics
    Describe ROI, TTM and CSat as all-around good metrics.  Explain red-yellow-green project dashboard and lines-of-code as bad metrics.  Ask for other examples of good or bad metrics.
  2. Handout: Value Metrics [PDF]
  3. Exercise: Value Metrics
    10 minutes.  At table teams try to come up with at least 10 quantitative and 10 qualitative metrics.  Use the handout as a worksheet.  Focus on metrics relevant to the simulation product, but also consider metrics that might be from other businesses or viewpoints (e.g. finance metrics, marketing analytics, etc.).
  4. Discussion: Value Metrics
    Throughout the classroom, share all the metrics and write them on a flip chart so they can all be seen at once.  Ask for insights or questions about metrics.
  5. Exercise: Key Metrics
    From the flipchart, each table team should choose 3 to 6 metrics that are most important to measure business success of their product.  It’s okay for that short list to include ROI, TTM and CSat.  Keep this list handy for the next part of the simulation.
  6. Discussion: Metrics and Product Vision
    Discuss if/how Product Vision helped to choose the key metrics.  If needed, allow a few moments for participants to reconsider the metrics they chose in light of their Product Vision.

Product Backlog Items

Remind participants that in Scrum, we don’t necessarily do all the steps of the simulation in any particular order. Instead, we are practicing techniques that can come into use at various times. The Product Owner Simulation must be done in a particular order. The techniques are all part of the overall process of Product Backlog Refinement.

  1. Handout: Creating Product Backlog Items Worksheet [PDF]
  2. Exercise: Create Product Backlog Items
    Use the product box, the user categories, and the business metrics.  For each row in the worksheet, identify a feature, decide which user interacts with the product to exercise that feature, and choose the business metric that is most improved by implementing the feature.  For each, decide if the feature is visible to the user through the user interface.  The resulting worksheet should be filled up such that at least ten of the features are visible in the user interface.
  3. Handout: User Stories [PDF]
  4. Lecture: Writing Effective User Stories
    Use the example “As a Job Seeker, I can upload my resume, so that I get a job.”  Explain the user story template based on the handout.  Emphasize the idea of end user functionality.  Explain user stories as an important tool, but optional part of Scrum. Usually some time is spent on a discussion about physical note cards vs. electronic tools – emphasize the fact that the note cards support the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto while electronic tools (typically) subvert them.
  5. Exercise: Create User Stories
    Goal: 20 user stories for each group’s product, at least five user stories for the persona, and two user stories for each other type of user, all done in 20 minutes.  User Stories must be written on 3×5 note cards with a 2cm blank area on right side of each card.  The groups start by writing one or two User Stories together, then divide and conquer to create the rest.  At the end of the 20 minutes, there is a brief amount of time allocated to making sure there are no duplicated “features” described.
  6. Discussion: Review User Stories
    Workshop examples from each group.  Ensure that the “benefit” section of each story does not contain a feature.  Possibly discuss the three parts of a User Story as “who”, “what” and “why”.  The benefit is usually related to time, money or happiness and connects the User Story to the product vision.
  7. Handout: Simple Story Sizing [PDF]
  8. Exercise: Small, Uncertain, Large Effort Estimation
    Small means “easily and with certainty fits within a single Sprint”, large means “definitely requires more than a full Sprint of work”, and uncertain means either “uncertain size” or “uncertain if it will fit in a single Sprint”.  Teams create buckets and sort all the user stories into the three buckets – they must role play being technical contributors (Development Team Members).  Start by identifying one “small” one and one “large” one, then by dividing an conquering.  Final step is to verify that the small ones really are small.
  9. Handout: User Story Splitting [PDF]
  10. Lecture: Splitting User Stories
    Go through each of the “top” six splitting methods.  Provide simple examples where the group needs help.  E.g. error conditions as an example of splitting by business logic.
  11. Exercise: Split Some
    Goal: result in at least 30 user stories, use each of the top six splitting methods at least once, give 15 minutes.  Focus on splitting the items that were estimated in the “Large” or “Uncertain” buckets.
  12. Discussion: Review Splitting

Estimation and Financial Modelling

Remind participants that in Scrum, we don’t necessarily do all the steps of the simulation in any particular order. Instead, we are practicing techniques that can come into use at various times. The Product Owner Simulation must be done in a particular order. The techniques are all part of the overall process of Product Backlog Refinement.

  1. Lecture: Effort, Value and ROI
    Customers and business stakeholders estimate value, Scrum team members estimate effort, and ROI is the calculation of the ration of value over effort.  Discuss examples of ordering based on these ratios, e.g. 8/2 vs. 8/4 and 200/20 vs. 20/2.
  2. Handout: The Bucket System [link to page with PDF download]
  3. Lecture: The Bucket System
    Review process based on handout.
  4. Exercise: Estimating Business Value
    10 minutes.  Goal: all user stories get a business value estimate written in the top right-hand corner of the user story card.
  5. Discussion: Debrief the Bucket System
  6. Handout: The Planning Game [link to a page with PDF download]
  7. Lecture: The Planning Game
  8. Exercise: Estimating Effort
    20 minutes. Goal: estimate 3 user stories using the Planning Game.  Use the Bucket System to estimate the remainder with the ones already estimated as the reference points.
  9. Discussion: Debrief the Planning Game
  10. Handout: Methods of Ordering the Product Backlog [PDF]
  11. Lecture: Ordering a Product Backlog
    Review ROI as a method to order the PBIs.  Reminder that the Product Owner has final authority and can ignore the estimates in deciding on the order.
  12. Exercise: Calculating ROI and Ordering
    5 minutes.  Just simple divide-and-conquer calculations of business value divided by effort for all the user stories.
  13. Lecture: Simulation Wrap-Up – Where Does This Fit?
    Reminder of the idea of creating an initial Product Backlog that is “good enough” to start the first Sprint.

NOTE: Permission to use the Product Owner Simulation exercise and print associated materials is granted with a simple request: please link to this page on your blog, in a LinkedIn group or Google group, like it on Facebook etc. or write a comment in our comments section!

If you are interested in experiencing this Product Owner Simulation first-hand, please consider attending one of our Certified Scrum Product Owner learning events.

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