Agile

Software’s worst enemy: consensus

Posted on by will

A vote for everybody is a vote for nobody.

A committee (parliament) voting on something

Photo from here.

The best software and products dazzle out of the box. They set new boundaries and exceed expectations. And they don’t settle for less than outstanding.

Designing software with lots of stakeholders is complicated, but when the product manager prioritises reaching a compromise between all the stakeholders instead of pushing for unique, beautiful and remarkable, the result is more often than not unspectacular.

Worse still are product teams that are set up without a clear product leader – product teams comprised of a group of ‘area’ product managers, who are each responsible for their own product piece, but who together, and in a purely democratic way, are supposed to come up with one aligned, cohesive and most of all compelling end-to-end product proposition. This is called ‘design by committee’, and nearly always ends in mediocrity.

The problem here is that each area product owner is focussed on his or her piece of the overall proposition, and each have their own priorities, visions and strategies. Just packing these guys together in a room is not going to result in them coming up with a remarkable and balanced product proposition. What this scenario often results in is some kind of portal; it’s at best a mash-up of separate products – something that tries to do everything and ends up doing nothing particularly well.

A product needs a product leader – someone who is willing to make decisions that displease some people and to fight for the ultimate product vision. Michael Arrington, founder of Techcrunch, says:

“Product should be a dictatorship. Not consensus driven. There are casualties. Hurt feelings. Angry users. But all of those things are necessary if you’re going to create something unique.”

A product team should not be a democracy. A product team needs a leader; it needs someone who calls the shots and makes the decisions that will displease, disappoint and delight.

Consensus-driven teams often have challenges understanding and agreeing on what is important now (prioritisation) and what is important overall (scope). A product team made up of area POs have by definition conflicting objectives. The PO for component X believes that part is the key product proposition; the PO for component Y sees it differently. The result of the ensuing debate is often a compromise; “ok, let’s build it all”. In their fantastic book Getting Real, 37 Signals founders share their view on software design:

“Some people argue software should be agnostic. They say it’s arrogant for developers to limit features or ignore feature requests. They say software should always be as flexible as possible. We think that’s bullshit.”

Of course, there are important requirements that the ‘master’ Product Owner needs to fill. He or she needs to understand the product and be able to present a compelling vision. He or she needs to be able to make difficult decisions and disappoint some people, but be convincing and considerate in the explanation. Most of all, he or she needs to understand the product extremes that make the product unique and remarkable, and not compromise on them. In other words, they need to be a leader.

I’ve seen product teams try to fill this role with a Program Manager. It doesn’t work: a roadmap slide is not a product vision. I’ve seen product teams try to fill this role with a Requirements Manager. It doesn’t work: a requirements list, or even a product backlog, is not a product vision. I’ve seen product teams try to fill this role with senior managers who poke their heads in every so often. It doesn’t work: a day’s worth of rash, under-informed decision making does not substitute consistent and detailed thought.

A product needs a product leader. And if that’s you, then my tip is: don’t give in to consensus, and don’t settle! You will never please everyone… not all users, not all colleagues, not all bosses. So please, give up trying. Sometimes innovation comes from having the courage to disappoint people (and the wisdom to know when!).

Focusing on your product vision

Posted on by will

In agile we promote working in small iterations, and building just enough to solve your problem today. I try to encourage my team to avoid designing a problem to the very end, but to focus only on what is necessary to solve the first; most basic problem.

BUT: focus and iterative execution should not be confused with a lack of vision…

Vision (why are we doing all this? What direction are we heading in?) is long term, far reaching and top-level, and vision is crucial to help you make the right decisions about what is important today, and what will be important tomorrow.

The execution against the vision however is based on small increments; small, little steps that move you towards what the vision looks like today. I say today, because the vision can change. In fact, the vision should change over time; it should adapt and adjust to evolving competition and user/customer feedback. Building in iterations allows your vision to adjust, and allows you to adjust to your vision.

Working in agile is no excuse to forget your product vision. Agile is all about taking small steps and adjusting along the way: but you still need to know where you’re going.

The dinosaur might be the solution

Posted on by will

What happens if you start building a castle and you end up with a dinosaur?
That’s ok – maybe in the end the dinosaur is the solution to your actual problem.

What happens if you build a castle, but it turns out you really needed a dinosaur? Well, then you’re in trouble.

With any creative endeavour, whether it’s a software project or something else entirely, build quickly just enough to solve your problem today. Start with the problem, break it down into smaller problems and prioritise them – then work on one problem at a time.

The thing with designing a whole castle is that it’s hard to know where to stop. How many turrets are enough? How thick should the walls be? How deep do we need the moat? Even if you can answer all of these questions today (and chances are, you can’t), the time you invest designing complex castle architecture could have been spent building the wall you really need to keep the attacking vikings out. Then during the years you spend building your mega-castle you are relatively unprotected, since the value of your castle comes when it’s complete.

Even if a whole castle is what you need now, chances are by the time you finish building the castle the world will have changed. How do you know you will still need a castle in 2 or 3 years? What if by then you need a dinosaur?

Solve today’s problem today, and save tomorrow’s problem for tomorrow. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, solving problems of the future today is very often not smart preparation, but waste.

Another reason working in silos is wasteful and inefficient

Posted on by will

We had some tradesmen in our apartment building this week to renovate the stairwell. It was a bit depressed looking and the old carpet was a bit naff; so time for a refresh.

So the first tradesmen on the scene were the ‘stairs guys’. These guys pulled the old carpet and re-laid some new stuff, and cleaned the bits of brass that run along the edge of each step. They also re-painted the little wooden skirting boards that run along the side of the floor and each step; a nice, soothing blue. Before they painted, they went very carefully along each step and each skirting board and put masking tape on the wall above the skirting, so that their paint wouldn’t mark the walls. It’s a 5 storey building, so I’m guessing it was the better part of a day to mask it properly.

Here’s the fun part: two days after the stairs guys were gone, the ‘wall guys’ turned up to paint the walls. Before they painted, they went very carefully along the skirting boards and put masking tape along the top, to make sure they didn’t spill paint over the freshly painted skirting boards.

Painting the stairs in silos
Painting the stairs in silos

Now, if the stairs guys had have just talked to the wall guys, the stairs guys would have realised that they don’t need to mask the wall above the skirting boards… it’s going to get painted over anyway. Could have saved themselves a day of a very dull job. But since the stairs guys are working in the stairs guys silo, and the wall guys are working in the wall guys silo, there is no communication, no information exchange and little in the way of efficiency. (And at the end of the day, we still get the bill for that day spent masking the walls.)

How often do you see this in your projects and products? How often do you see decisions made and solutions implemented that solve a problem for one link of the chain without considering the whole, end-to-end product?

The thing with working in silos is that it encourages “not my job” thinking – as in, “I could do something about this problem, but it’s not my job to fix it”. How many times do you hear a sentence like: “the testing environment is slow because we use a database server from team x and we do not have any control over it.” I hear it often… I heard exactly that sentence today.

Siloed thinking and “not my job” thinking seems to be a natural evolution of scaling up, especially when you scale quickly. Once it’s in the company culture, though, it’s hard to weed out. Better then, if you can, to catch it as it happens.

Better scrum user stories: Split stories horizontally, not vertically

Posted on by will

Teams often run into trouble in a sprint when they’re trying to work with poorly split stories. Stories that are too big, too small, confusing or that mix the problem with the solution…

We should split stories into small, discreet chunks of functionality. A single story should generally be the smallest discreet piece of functionality that adds business value. What is sometimes forgotten is that a single story should also have a complete user experience flow – it should bring the user from a determined start point to a complete, useful end.

When splitting large user stories down into smaller ones, remember to ensure the story captures a complete user flow. When splitting, think splitting horizontally, not vertically.

A horizontally split story will show a single flow, or path, through a user journey. (For example, a payment process that covers the simplest functionality, a single payment type, inability to modify your order, etc. The options are very limited, but the user is able to reach a useful end – ie, they can pay for something.)

A vertically split story will show multiple paths through a flow, but will stop before the flow can reach a useful end. (For example, a payment process that covers, at once, all the different payment methods that you ultimately want to support, but not the surrounding user flow.)

The problem with splitting vertically instead of horizontally is that vertical ‘strips’ have the entire complexity of the full, complete solution, but you lose the ability to test the whole flow properly. It is also far more tempting to dive into a pie-in-the-sky architecture discussion because to build all the full options for this one strip requires an understanding of all the inputs and outputs of the flow – most of which probably don’t exist yet.

An incomplete flow not only adds no user or business value to your product, but it’s very difficult for teams to build effective solutions for incomplete flows. Think and split in terms of thin, horizontal flows, and increase complexity with additional horizontal ‘layers’ (additional stories).

Get it over with

Posted on by will

I recently wrote about the Satir change curve, which is a model for describing the impact of new processes on the performance/velocity of a team or organisation. In short, your velocity is going to go down before it goes up.

Understanding this curve, and having the courage to stick it out, is the key to driving new processes through in your team… but when you know the dip is coming, it’s tempting to put off implementation until “the right time”.

The problem is of course that there is never a “right time”. The perfect time for your performance to dip will never come along. Ever. There will always be another looming deadline, another bug to fix, another conference, another angry VP and another reason to put off getting better.

So just get started. Change something – today. Right now. Not only is another day of procrastination and fear just delaying the pain, but it’s also costing you and your team the extra performance that they could be profiting from in a month from now.

And when you’re done – change something else.