Question 1

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 2

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 3

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 4

Customer Persona

Accepted Answer

A customer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal prospect (or customer) based on market research and actual data about your present customers. It includes demographic data, behavior patterns, motivations, life-style, behaviors, pain points and objectives.

Customer personas are used to segment your customers into groups, identify their different needs, and tailor your product features or service to each group.

Organizations create customer personas for their product / business to make their offering relevant to their customer needs.

Question 5

Incremental Development

Accepted Answer

Incremental Development is a software development approach that focuses on delivering value (even if small portion of the overall product) early to seek customer's feedback. Based on the customer feedback, builds additional features on earlier versions of the product. Each increment adds up in value and is more valuable from the previous increment.

Also see: Increment

Question 6

Complex System

Accepted Answer

A complex system is a collection of interdependent parts, modules, and/or variables. A perfect understanding of individual parts does not automatically convey a perfect understanding of the whole system's behaviour.

The state of a complex system can't be predicted due to the reason that it's parts dynamically change and every change influences the state of other parts and the overall system.

Is your work environment Obvious, Complicated, Complex or Chaotic?

Please analyze your current work environment, and identify which of these variables change in your work environment?

Customer Needs
Technology
Talent/People
Competition
Organizational Goals
Marketplace
Government Regulation
All of the Above

If you answered All of the above (or many of the above) your work environment is Complex.

Question 7

Business Agility

Accepted Answer

Business agility is the capability to quickly change or adapt to changes in a business. Building Business Agility is an ongoing process and not a one-time event. Business agility can also be referred to as organizational agility, or adaptive business.

Business agility is the ability of a company to adjust to changes quickly. In business, agility involves the ability to change one’s strategy, operational model, and operating processes in response to internal and external changes.

This changes can be external, such as changing market conditions or government regulations. Internal changes can also have a big impact on business agility, such as disrupting the company culture or stakeholder loyalties, swiftly reacting to customer demands and quickly launching new products.

Organizations that have a high level of business agility will be better suited to take advantage of emerging opportunities, that will allow them to grow and overcome competition.

Question 8

LeSS Framework

Accepted Answer

LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum) is a framework focused on applying the principles, elements, and purpose of Scrum in a large-scale context. Less is Scrum applied to multiple teams building a large product.

Like Scrum, LeSS hits the sweet spot between defined concrete elements and empirical process control.

LeSS offers:

Introduction to LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum) - Shana:

Less Complete Picture by Micheal James, Certified LeSS Trainer:

Question 9

Blocker

Accepted Answer

Blocker is anything that blocks the team from making progress.

Please also see Impediment.

Question 10

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 11

Feature Teams

Accepted Answer

A feature team, is a cross-functional, cross-component team dedicated to building end-to-end customer features one by one.

A feature team usually consists of members from all areas of a system, such as: business, development, operations, product, and technology.

Building a feature team requires that team members are empowered to work on all the components of the system that avoids depending on other teams. This speeds up the development work and avoids waiting, delays and hand-offs significantly increasing the value throughput.

Feature teams will benefit from having Full stack engineers / generalizing specialists in the team. However, it's not expected that every team member knows every skill.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/iBXIwUgCog/resources/5nVvAvL5Oj/Feature%20Teams.png (Feature Teams)

Source: Feature Teams Primer by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde

Question 12

Scrum Events

Accepted Answer

Scrum combines four formal events within a containing event, the Sprint. (That makes total 5 Scrum Events)

Four formal Scrum Events are:

Sprint Planning
Daily Scrum
Sprint Review
Sprint Retrospective

Scrum Events are a formal opportunity to inspect and adapt the Scrum artifacts. Missing any event(s) results in lost opportunities to inspect and adapt.

Events are used in Scrum to create regularity and to minimize the need for meetings not defined in Scrum.

Scrum events are designed to provoke change

Question 13

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.

PP

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/iBXIwUgCog/resources/wcEQPCNkBu/PP.png (PP)

Image source: Interaction Design Foundation

This 80-20 rule can be applied to many areas such as business, learning, finance, sales, marketing, customer service etc.

The Pareto Principle is named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923).

Question 18

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 19

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 20

Open Space

Accepted Answer

Open Space is a democratic way to facilitate and organize meetings, conferences, and organizational work involving a large number of people with diverse backgrounds and interest.

Participants opt in to create and manage the agenda of discussions as it emerges to achieve strategic and complex objectives.

Harrison Owen an Open Space Evangelist describes the Four Principles and One Law which guide behavior of participants in Open space.

**The principles are: **

Whoever comes is the right people, which reminds people in the small groups that getting something done is not a matter of having 100,000 people and the chairman of the board. The fundamental requirement is people who care to do something. And by showing up, that essential care is demonstrated.
Whatever happens is the only thing that could have, keeps people focused on the here and now, and eliminates all of the could-have-beens, should-have-beens or might-have-beens. What is is the only thing there is at the moment.
Whenever it starts is the right time, alerts people to the fact that inspired performance and genuine creativity rarely, if ever, pay attention to the clock. They happen (or not) when they happen.
Lastly When it’s over it’s over. In a word, don’t waste time. Do what you have to do, and when its done, move on to something more useful.

The Law of Two Feet, which states simply, if at any time you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing – use you two feet and move to some place more to you liking. Such a place might be another group, or even outside into the sunshine. No matter what, don’t sit there feeling miserable