Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #Agile

Heard (again) that #design and #ux is somehow incompatible with #agile (which to most, means #scrum).

..that ppl can’t always jam their work into little increments

..that MVPs suck because they’re never improved

..that work can’t always be boiled down into a “ticket” 1/n

...that #design is more than screens...a more holistic view is needed

...that an output fixation is killing products

...that quality shouldn’t be sacrificed just to get stuff out the door

...that craft should be respected

...that #ux debt sucks 2/n

...and you know what? Those exact same things are muttered by engineers/QA all the time.

They have nothing to do with #agile, but everything to do with paint-by-numbers approaches to “delivery”, org silos, and overly simplistic “#design then build” models. 3/n

There are many ways to inspire a “sense of urgency” that have nothing to do with estimates/deadlines.

#agile #lean #softwaredevelopment

1. First ... giving enough context so people give a fuck. That’s a start. Otherwise, you can’t expect people to “go the extra mile”...

#agile #softwaredevelopment #ux #devops

2. Let them STOP doing things that are less valuable. Nothing says “you’re free to focus and care” more than freeing people from context switching and multi-tasking.

“What would you like to stop doing, to leave time for this?”

#agile #softwaredevelopment #ux #DevOps

Read 4 tweets

Jubobs

@_jubobs_

I'm only halfway through Bertrand Meyer's 2014 book, "Agile! The Good, the Hype and the Ugly", but it's already proven its worth as a lucid, unrestrained appraisal of #Agile principles and methodologies. Here are a few passages that resonated with me...

"#XP's insistence that [pair programming] should be the absolute rule [...] makes little sense conceptually, as it neglects the role of programmer personality (some excellent developers like to concentrate alone and will resent having to be paired) [...]"

"Starting any significant software project (anything beyond a couple of months and a couple of developers) without taking the time to write some basic document defining core requirements is professional malpractice."

Read 19 tweets

Realized I had some posts that actually make sense as a series... a little blook

1/10 Moving beyond the platitudes of outcomes vs. outputs....it is all a spectrum
hackernoon.com/beyond-outcome…

#prodmgmt #ux #design #agile #modernagile

2/10 Distinguising value and sequencing. Start with opportunities before getting bogged down in “LOE”
hackernoon.com/value-and-sequ…

#prodmgmt #ux #design #agile #modernagile

3/10 Prioritizing non-feature work and continuous improvement ... there’s value here too.
hackernoon.com/prioritizing-n…

#prodmgmt #ux #design #agile #modernagile

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So here’s an observation and question for the #scrum community.

One of the biggest issues I’ve seen with teams new to scrum is backlog refinement. Most people do it wrong and it has huge implications on #prodmgmt. /1

I have seen hundreds of teams treat backlog refinement as a two hour meeting where they rewrite user stories and estimate them.

While both of those are good things to do, they usually only do these two activities, instead of creating shared understanding about the work. /2

Teams don’t spend this time story mapping, discussing in detail, or contextualizing the end state of the product together.

Actually teams new to scrum usually don’t do any of those things. /3

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Almost every discussion I have that starts with “we need to go faster” ends with me asking the team to “define value”, and then do less once and work in smaller batches.

It is at this point that the reality sets in ...1/3
#agile #kanban #prodmgmt

... the reality is that the current system is optimized for:
-saying “yes we’re on it”
-keeping people busy
-brokering resource capacity
-keeping track of all the work in progress
-providing plausible reasons why nothing is shipping

Well...2/3
#agile #kanban #prodmgmt

This should be easy to unwind, right? It’s math. Do less smaller stuff = go faster. Limit WIP ... discover/remove bottlenecks.

Well no. Because those optimizations run so, so deep. Reputations. Ego. Agendas. Promises to investors ... 3/4

#agile #kanban #prodmgmt

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We were looking for a way to do something different than our competitors who were focused on SEO. We decided to tackle sending people rental listings in slack. @davemastersnyc #agileux

@davemastersnyc

We discovered it was too hard to install apps on slack, so we decided to keep the thread of the idea but pivot to FB messenger. @davemastersnyc #AgileUX

@davemastersnyc

We learned that apps ramp up slow but they contributed to a top line organic audience AND repeating visitors to hit our goals! @davemastersnyc #AgileUX

Read 4 tweets

Fauzan Emmerling

@femmerling

Banyak banget yang nanya, ngerjain startup tu asik ya? Gw share dikit ya ilmu gw di per-startup-an selama 13 tahun terakhir. Bakal panjang ya jadi sabar-sabar ngikutinnya

Gw yakin banyak banget di sini yang ngebayangin jadi kaya Mark Zuckerberg gara-gara nonton the social network. Bikin startup tidak seindah itu, apalagi jaman sekarang, PENUH PENDERITAAN. Iya lo ga salah baca. PENUH PENDERITAAN. Tapi bukan berarti ga asik kok sob nanti lo liat

Pengalaman startup pertama gw dimulai tahun 2005. Startup pertama gw adalah sebuat software house. Jaman itu masih ngenes lah. Kenapa ngenes? Itu jamannya masih kalo lo di bidang IT harus bisa jadi superman yang bisa segala macem dan dibayar serendah mungkin

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Words matter... (1/5)

Notice how words like discovery, design, delivery, build, and run often get coopted to silo / segment / divide teams/ppl

To draw imaginary lines around skills. To protect kingdoms even. To make pretty left to right diagrams.

#ux #design #agile #devops

It is very different for a team to ask a couple of its members to get upstream a bit & do some research/discovery...because it adds value

...than it is to structure your Jira workflow, PMO “process”, or SDLC around handoffs and silos. (2/5)

#ux #design #agile #devops

#design / #prodmgmt are vulnerable to believing their own hype. That by owning “the problem”, they’re staying relevant, and by feeding the delivery machine they’re doing everyone a favor. But this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. (3/5)

#ux #design #agile #devops

Neil Killick

@neil_killick

Trying a new angle for teaching story slicing, one of the biggest struggles for teams attempting #agile ways of working and arguably the most important practice to understand, given we are trying to deliver value to customers in very short cycles. Read on if you are interested.

The way I see it, there are 3 levels of story slicing, each of which is beneficial and necessary to be able to deliver shippable increments consistently in 2 wks or less. I am currently calling them Capability Slicing, Functional Slicing and Implementation Slicing. What are they?

Capability Slicing is the narrowing of a broader capability* into more precise ones, each independently valuable and implementable and, by necessity, smaller in potential scope.

*The story of enabling a human being to achieve something they cannot currently achieve

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Let’s talk Definition of Done

First, with sw-prod-dev our work is never “Done”. What we’re really talking about is a temporary stopping function ...DoDFRN ... definition of done for right now (thread 1/6) #agile #prodmgmt

You should have various pivot/proceed points throughout the effort ... multiple potential stopping functions ... to defeat sunk cost bias, and to hopefully incorporate new feedback/learning. What is your DoSRN ... Definition of Stop Right Now? (2/6) #agile #prodmgmt

We don’t do things just to be done ... we do them to have a celebrate-able outcome. What is your DoSWBPO ... Definition of Something We’d Be Proud Of? (3/6) #agile #prodmgmt

Some tips for PdM working with software developers ...
#agile #prodmgmt #ux #design

1/ They’re masters of coherence in arguments, information, and statements. Expect to be called out (bluntly) on something ... and for them to be right.

2/ Don’t assume silence means a lack of interest. Sadly, introverts get chased out of the “business world”. In the swdev team world, extroverts AND introverts thrive (cool huh?). Many or my dev friends choose to chew on a thought for a long time before interjecting.

3/ Imagine a world where your every keystroke is (basically) measured, scrutinized, Jira-ed, and reviewed. And ****ing up means the whole app can go down (or worse). Compare that to your world, where you can often dismiss something with a hand wavy “that’s a learning!”

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Josh Seiden

@jseiden

This pair of tweets neatly capture the conflicted feelings in the design community about #agile.

On the one hand, designers embrace emergence. On the other, we are hostile to agile, a system created to handle emergence. /2

Of course, that hostility is understandable, since agile is often implemented as a "build methodology." /3

Jeff Gothelf

@jboogie

When we wrote #leanux we wanted to help product design and development teams collaborate more effectively and ultimately build better products for their customers. The overwhelming feedback from readers has been (no surprise) that they want to work this way. However...

What we didn't expect was the amount of teams out there telling us things like "my boss won't let me work this way" or "my company would never let us talk to customers." Hearing this again and again gave us the sense that there was (at least) another conversation to be had. So...

We wrote another book - #senseandrespond . That book took the conversation up a level to leaders and makes the case that to stay competitive in today's business world you have to build continuous learning loops with your customers. I believe many orgs heard this message but...

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I want to talk about something I keep hearing from many places when I ask teams about their processes:

"We are different"

#agile #prodmgmt /1

Whenever I coach someone or start consulting with a company, I start off with an assessment where I try to learn about the individual products and how they are run. /2

During these sessions I usually ask about how people think of strategy, do prioritization, structure their teams, and communicate. Lots of other stuff too. /3

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