Question 1

Lean Product Development

Accepted Answer

Lean product development a method for developing products that focuses on increasing visibility through small batches, shortening feedback loops, reducing waste, and continuous improvement. It results in speeding up delivery, reducing lead time and increasing customer value.

Some of the Principles of Lean product development are:

Eliminate waste.
Amplify Learning.
Build change capacity
Fast Feedback through rapid development
Empower the team
Build integrity in
See the whole

Also see: Lean Thinking, Lean Waste

Question 2

Continuous Deployment

Accepted Answer

The continuous deployment strategy involves automatically releasing every code change (commit) into the production environment after it is (automatically) built, integrated and has passed the automated testing. This makes changes immediately visible to the software's users.

Continuous deployment can help reduce the risk of errors in live software by eliminating the need for manual approval of code changes.

To be effective, continuous deployment must be used in conjunction with other production-ready development practices. Practices such as rigorous automated testing and real-time monitoring of production environment. This will allow any issues with new releases to be detected quickly and efficiently.

The need for continuous delivery can be traced back to the first principle of the Agile Manifesto (origin Feb, 2001):

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

Also see: Continuous Delivery, Continuous Integration

Question 3

Kanban

Accepted Answer

Kanban is a lean method, a framework to visualize work and improve the flow of value through the system.

Initiated by Toyota as part of the Toyota Production System, Kanban (in Japanese) is a visual card used as a scheduling system, showcasing the essential information and progress of the work through the product development system.

Following four essential practices help optimize the flow of value:

Visualize the workflow
Limit work in progress
Manage flow
Make process policies explicit

Through pull based movement of the work, Kanban helps achieve evolutionary improvements in process and product.

Question 4

Product Owner

Accepted Answer

The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product/service being built.

The Product Owner owns the decisions related to funds, works with the stakeholders and steers the direction of the product to optimize the outcomes and impact for the customers.

Question 5

Product Vision

Accepted Answer

Product Vision is a high-level, aspirational statement that articulates the long-term direction and purpose of a product. It provides a clear and inspiring picture of what the product is meant to accomplish, who it is intended for, and benefits it provides to the customers.

A well-defined product vision helps build a shared understanding, align teams, and provide clarity on the desired outcomes for the product.

The importance of Product Vision lies in its ability to inspire, motivate, and guide the product team throughout the product development cycle. It serves as a North Star, helping to keep the team focused on what truly matters and ensuring that everyone is working towards the same goals. It also helps to align stakeholders and customers around a shared vision for the product, which can improve communication, reduce conflicts, and increase the chances of success.

The Product Goal is a specific, relatively short-term, and measurable objective that helps the team make progress towards that vision. It guides the team to focus on delivering incremental value.

Examples of Product Vision:

The Amazon Kindle: "To provide customers with the best possible reading experience on a digital device." The Kindle's product vision is centered around delivering a superior reading experience that replicates the experience of reading a physical book as closely as possible, with features like a glare-free display, long battery life, and access to a vast library of e-books.
Google Maps: "To organize the world's geographic information and make it universally accessible and useful." Google Maps' product vision reflects its mission to provide users with accurate and detailed maps that help them navigate the world around them, with features like turn-by-turn directions, real-time traffic updates, and user-generated reviews.
Netflix: "To become the world's leading internet television network, offering a wide range of TV shows and movies to our members." Netflix's product vision centers around providing users with a vast library of high-quality streaming content that they can access anytime, anywhere, with features like personalized recommendations, ad-free viewing, and offline downloads.
Tesla Model S: "To accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy by creating the safest, most compelling car ever produced." The Model S's product vision reflects Tesla's commitment to promoting clean energy and reducing carbon emissions, with features like a high-performance electric drivetrain, advanced safety features, and a sleek, futuristic design.

Question 6

Product Goal

Accepted Answer

"The Product Goal describes a future state of the product which can serve as a target for the Scrum Team to plan against." - Scrum Guide 2020.

Crafted and Communicated by the Product Owner, the Product Goal is the long-term objective, a specific and measurable benefit or outcome a product should create.

The Scrum Team is focused on one product goal at a time. They must fulfill (or abandon) one product goal before taking on the next.

Question 7

Lead Time

Accepted Answer

Lead Time is the time it takes from identifying a need (could be a customer problem, feature request, defect raised, technical enhancement etc.) to making a solution available to customers.

Having a shorter the lead time equates to more responsiveness.

To reduce the lead time in Scrum:

A Self-Managing and Cross-Functional Scrum Team further improves the ability to improve the rate of value delivery hence a shorter Lead Time.

Question 8

Spotify Engineering Culture

Accepted Answer

How Spotify (a music streaming company) built their engineering culture based on agile values, principles and techniques:

Part I:

Part II:

This video reflects Spotify's journey in progress, not the journey completed. Many teams blindly try to follow Spotify model and miserably fail at it, as the underlying context for every organization / team is different.

Question 9

Cynefin

Accepted Answer

The Cynefin Framework is a decision making framework, that recognizes the casual differences between systems and proposes new approaches to decision making in complex environemtn.

Cynefin is a sense-making model not a categorization model.

If the question is How do we make sense of the world, so we can act in it.

In nature, there are 3 basic systems: Ordered Systems, Choatic Systems and Complicated Systems. Once people know in which domain / system they are in, they can choose the domain specific response.

Question 10

Extreme Programming (XP)

Accepted Answer

Extreme Programming (XP) is a light weight framework intended to improve software quality, responsiveness to changing customer needs and achieve higher quality of life for the team.

Aligned with the Values and Principles of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, XP advocates frequent releases in short development cycles, intended to improve productivity and introduce regular checkpoints to adopt to the changing customer needs.

XP improves a software solutions in five essential ways:

Communication: XP favors simple designs, common metaphors, collaboration of users and programmers, frequent verbal communication, and feedback.
Simplicity: Simple system design with very simple code could be easily understood by most programmers in the team. XP starts with the simplest solution useful to the customers today. Extra functionality can then be added later.
Feedback: Short Feedback cycles from the System: ( by writing unit tests, or running periodic integration tests), Feedback from the Customer (Acceptance tests gets concrete feedback about the current state), and Feedback from the Team (team directly gives an estimation of the time that it will take to implement customer needs) help with communication and maintain simplicity.
Respect: Respect is a key value for programmers, which includes respect for others and self. Committing changes that break compilation, or delay the work of peers is not a sign of respect towards others. Members can show respect for their own work by striving for high quality and actively seeking feedback.
Courage: Courage enables developers to feel comfortable with designing solutions for what's important today and refactoring their code when necessary. Courage is to remove source code that is obsolete. Courage also means persistence to solve complex problem.

The original twelve practices are listed below:

The Planning Game
Small Releases
Metaphor
Simple Design
Testing
Refactoring
Pair Programming
Collective Ownership
Continuous Integration
40-hour week
On-site Customer
Coding Standard

Question 11

Agility

Accepted Answer

Agility is an ability to gracefully adapt to changing needs.

In a dynamic and changing environment many variable such as: Customer's Needs, Technology, Market Conditions, Competition may change requiring a team / product / organization respond to these changes to stay relevant in the market.

Question 12

Release Planning

Accepted Answer

Release Planning is the process of planning a product release, identifying the capabilities that need to be released, stakeholders and team members involved, budget and timelines.

In Scrum, every Sprint enables inspection and adaptation of progress toward a Product Goal. Every Sprint begins with Sprint Planning and results in at least one increment that is usable to customers.

Some teams release increments multiple times a sprint, other teams group features from more than a sprint before releasing to the customers.

Those releasing at least once a sprint, do not need seperate release planning besides the Sprint Planning that already exists.

Question 13

Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Accepted Answer

A performance indicator is a quantifiable measure of performance over time for a specific strategic objective.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are performance indicators most critical to an organization.

KPIs provide goals for teams to work towards, milestones to gauge progress, and insights that help employees across the organization make effective decisions. From sales and marketing to finance and HR, KPIs help every area of the business move forward at the strategic and operational level.

Question 14

Conway's Law

Accepted Answer

“Organizations who design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structure of these organizations.” Melvin Conway

Meaning, the organizational silos and departmental boundaries will eventually reflect in the design of the product / system they build.

To avoid such results, organizations must rethink on the structures and communications in place.

One solution to that challenge is to create Feature Teams.

Please refer: Feature Teams

Question 15

Scrum Artifacts

Accepted Answer

A Scrum team needs access to shared information in order to effectively perform its activities and Inspect the information.

Scrum Artifacts are designed to maximize transparency of key information. Thus, everyone inspecting them has the same basis for adaptation.

The three Scrum Artifacts represent work or value:

Product Backlog
Sprint Backlog
Increment

Each artifact contains a commitment to ensure it provides information that enhances transparency and focus against which progress can be measured.

Question 16

Continuous Delivery

Accepted Answer

Continuous Delivery is the practice of delivering small changes to software quickly, frequently and continually.

With a Continuous Delivery system, software builds are checked regularly using automated tests for quality and deployed to test and then to production environments as soon as they pass. Due to automation it is often possible to release multiple changes to the software per day.

This approach often accelerates software release cycles and minimizes the amount of time between when code is developed and released, shortening feedback cycle and improving adaptability.

Question 17

Technical Debt

Accepted Answer

Technical debt is the incomplete work that must be addressed to bring the product to the expected quality and functionality.

Technical Debt could be intentional as well as unintentional.

Intentional Tech Debt is a result of decisions made during product development that emphasize speed over the product quality.

When developers are rushed, they may cut corners and pay less attention to quality - the resulting product may have incomplete work / activities.

For example: lack of refactoring, not fixing known issues / defects, incomplete or ignored unit testing, etc.

Unintentional Tech Debt is a result of slopiness, lack of technical competence, bad design decisions, etc.

Having Technical Debt lowers the User Experience and also increase the cost of ownership.

Also see: Living Without Tech Debt

Question 18

Estimation

Accepted Answer

Estimation in product development is used to guess how much work can be completed and by when.

Various estimation techniques such as: Story Points, Planning Poker, T-Shirt Sizes, etc.. allow a team to relatively size the effort required to complete an item.

Estimation involves assumptions of the impact of various variables to complete an item such as:

Effort needed by the team (various functional experts) to complete an item
Complexity of the task
Unkonwns involved
and so on.....

While, Estimation may help to create a shared understanding about the work at hand among the developers, Product Owner and stakholders (optional), it usually takes away disproportional amount of time which is a big waste.

Assumptions based approaches are weak ideas at their best.

A much better and effective approach to forward looking decision making in complex environment is decision making based on Empiricism.