requirements elicitation—the social media way
DESCRIPTION
Agile methods have proven their ability to improve project success rates. However, when agile methods are applied to complex projects, we need to further explore the area of effective customer involvement. According to the agile philosophy, the users must be part of the development team. But, Stefano Rizzo asks: What if there are thousands of users with good ideas dispersed around the globe and around the clock? Can a Product Owner really represent all their interests? At Polarion, Stefano says they have used social media to successfully couple agile methods with more traditional requirements elicitation approaches. After hosting some user conferences, they created a community of users, project managers, and developers. Soliciting and nurturing their discussions regarding the product has created a lot of fuel for requirements definition and refinement process. Key benefits include the involvement of more stakeholders, a better company reputation, and the ability to harvest unusual requirements and unsolicited feedback that are helpful for the release strategy and product usability.TRANSCRIPT
BW10 Concurrent Session 11/13/2013 3:45 PM
"Requirements Elicitation—the Social Media Way"
Presented by:
Stefano Rizzo Polarion Software
Brought to you by:
340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073 888‐268‐8770 ∙ 904‐278‐0524 ∙ [email protected] ∙ www.sqe.com
Stefano Rizzo Polarion Software
In a career spanning some twenty years, Stefano Rizzo has been a methodology consultant, a pre-sales engineer, an IT researcher, a university professor, VP of R&D for a large consortium, Regional Sales Director for a software company, and CEO of two software development organizations. With his broad experience in the Application Lifecycle Management arena, he has been leading Product Management for Polarion Software’s product lines from its first release in 2005 until 2010. In his current SVP Strategy & Business Development role, in addition to defining corporate vision, he leads several research projects in the ALM and PLM fields.
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Polarion Software®
Requirements Elicitation The Social Media Way
Stefano Rizzo SVP Strategy and Business Development
Boston, November 13th, 2013
• Our Company
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Overview History
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2 5 Privately held company founded in 2004, First product release 2005
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Polarion In one pill
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Overview Polarion in Numbers
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150+ 250+ 10,000+ extensions Fortune 1000 deployments Registered community members
1,000,000 + users
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Overview Global Presence
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Overview Ovum ALM Decision Matrix
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Achievements
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Polarion Customers
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• Scrum @ Polarion Software
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
– Shorten time to release • …and ensure releases
– Transparency to management/customers • …and release what’s expected
– Faster reaction • to market needs • to users’ feedback • to the change
– Simplify synchronization of distributed teams – Easier releasing to the market
• Lower effort to stabilization, less things to test – Flexibility in prioritization, risk reduction
Why Scrum? The promise
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
– Has proven its benefits in small projects • Our main project is a huge one, lasting since 2004
– Frightens the board • Do we control costs and releases?
– Gives power to the development team • Does it ensure traceability and accountability?
– Needs the customer to be part of the team • Where will we sit 1.000.000 users?
But Scrum… Known Issues
Key issue we
address today
• So, Scrum…
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
We moved to Scrum from a traditional Development process 6 years ago
Scrum in Polarion Software When?
!
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• Polarion’s Iterative development has short iterations • 2 weeks, with meetings at the beginning and at the end of
each iteration (called sprint in Scrum)
Scrum in Polarion Software How?
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Scrum in Polarion Software We eat our own bread
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Scrum in Polarion Software Backlogs
• Product Backlog items • User Stories, described in a way that at least the idea behind
each one is clear. – “The user must be able to reset the status of an item to the
original one” (pretty good user story) – “Improve the performance of the product” (bad user story)
• Business value for Backlog items • Each User Story must be valuable for the user • A good prioritization is critical to ensure the success of the
project – Especially when you have two thousand candidates and the
ability to implement 10-12 in a iteration
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Scrum in Polarion Software Our backlogs
Every Backlog has an owner Backlog owners “play the user” into Sprint meetings
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Scrum in Polarion Software Backlogs
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Scrum in Polarion Software Project progress
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Scrum in Polarion Software Release burndown
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• Requirements?
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• The most difficult and critical job is to produce a good backlog of User Stories. – Altogether they cover the full product
• very hard to ensure – They are flat and independent on each other!
• Team work on the stories one after another
– They must be small • so you need to break “big” features into smaller sub stories –
thinking about user scenario for every small piece
Requirements and Scrum User stories
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• So, provided that we cannot invite all our users to our meetings, we have Product Managers “playing the customer”
• PMs derive User Stories from: – User Demand Management process
• Mainly fed by Professional Services and Sales
– Strategy meetings • Lot of ideas, often far from the ground…
– Internal and customer surveys • “Why that button is not blue?”
Requirements elicitation Road to user stories
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• Frequent and tangible results – Short iterations with visible improvements
• Easy control over development activities – But this needs discipline and tools
• Transparent project progress – But this needs a good backlog (i.e. good User Stories)
Scrum is good in… Benefits
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• In order to run Scrum effectively you must consider to: – Keep iterations as short as possible (2 weeks max) – Invest in product management/requirement spec.
• Definition of user stories is the critical bottleneck • Innovation happens outside the development team
– Keep high motivation in the development team • In “traditional” development, developers are requested to
invent a lot – with the shortfall that results could be different from what expected
• With Scrum developers are told what to do precisely, so they could be frustrated
Scrum needs… Implications
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• If you gather requirements for a SCRUM team you must consider that: – You are part of the Development Team, with them you
share success and blame • User stories are discussed every day, not just at the
beginning of the development • You must continuously try to find answers, examples,
clarifications for developers
– Your requirements must be decomposed into good user stories
• Finding out a requirement is still the key, but taking it to its real essence is not an easy task
Requirements and Scrum Your job
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• The Social way
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• A million users but just few contacts – Pretty typical in B2B
Before the Social way What were we lacking?
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• Complains
• Issues
• Strong requests
Before the Social way You get just…
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• Appreciation
• Small issues – like usability difficulties
• Users’ “mood”
Before the Social way You miss (quite) completely
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Let’s try Social Which Social?
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• Place vs. Channel – It was clear from the very beginning: it’s not a new
communication channel – It’s a beer with friends
Let’s try Social A Social place
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• Start with user conference – Meeting each other helps engagement a lot
• Create a community – With the social media that better fits your users
• Enlarge the community – Drill down companies with contests, “tell a friend”,
gadgets… – Put every employee you have in the community
• Nurture the community – Post some useful content, every day at least!!!
Our experience How to start?
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• Social is reputation – Can be good, can be bad
Our experience Reputation
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• Reputation is an investment – For technology makers reputation was coming from
the product – Now is the product + your employees talking with their
customers • They will probably do it, anyhow
– Better to give them time to do it and teach them how to do it
– Nurture the community, every day if not every minute
Our experience Reputation
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Our experience Which outcome?
• A lot of material… – Unstructured – From generic to too specific
• A lot of ideas… – Fuel for usability improvements – Clear understanding of most used and unused
features
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• Can be too small…
Outcome How much data?
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• In case of small feedback, answer to these questions: – Are we using the right medium? – Did we set the stage in the right way? – Are we using the right language? – Do we properly nurture the community?
Small data Why?
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• Can be too big…
Outcome Big Data
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• In case of too much data you need to invest into Big Data analysis. You will get: – Product improvements – Inspiration for your product strategy – Inspiration for your marketing strategy
• You will not get – Innovation: “only” a fertile soil for innovative minds
Big Data How?
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• The Polarion way
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• Selecting the right platform is critical – You should always use the platform of your users, not
force them to use something else… – What do our customer and the customer of our
customers use???
Issues Popular media not always working
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• Our typical users – System Engineers – Software Engineers – Business Analysts – Requirements Engineers and QA people
• They normally don’t use popular social media to discuss about their job-related stuff – They use Polarion!!! – So we made our product more Social
Social Polarion Social features in our product
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Social Polarion Engage and collaborate
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
Social Polarion Approve and comment
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Social Polarion Mobile
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• Conclusions
Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• Engage your users!
– involvement of more stakeholders – better company reputation – ability to harvest unusual requirements and
unsolicited feedback
Lessons learned Results
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Polarion Software® www.polarion.com
• Improved release strategy
• Improved product easiness of use
Lessons learned Benefits for us (you)
• Questions?
tw: steriz