Product Management at Contactually

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PRODUCT MANAGEMENT AT CONTACTUALLY August, 2013

Transcript of Product Management at Contactually

Page 1: Product Management at Contactually

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT AT CONTACTUALLY

August, 2013

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WHY WE’RE HERE

We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how best to manage a growing product, and a growing organization

behind it.

This document captures where we currently stand in our process.

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BEFORE: THE DARK DAYS

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THE BIG PILE OF WORK

• All development, planning, and prioritization was done through Pivotal Tracker.

• All upcoming development, planned development, bugs, team feedback, user feedback was thrown into the Icebox.

• Periodically, it would be gutted, with swaths of submitted items being deleted, pissing people off.

• The backlog grew to be insane.

• Engineers wouldn’t be pushing the product forward as much as chipping away at an ever-growing pile.

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WE ALSO TRIED

• Keeping a product roadmap in Excel.... which would periodically feed in to Pivotal, but just created more work.

• Collecting user feedback in Asana.... which created an endless pile of things we never got around to.

• Weekly product meetings.... which were hour-long arguments about which Pivotal task was more important.

• Keeping engineers focused with weekly sprints.... this actually helped, but it was still unclear what they were best tasked with.

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IT DIDN’T WORK

• As an open organization, product development was a black box, frustrating stakeholders.

• Everyone was out of sync, even engineers.

• The product was not moving forward.

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WHAT WE NEEDED

• A open system so all stakeholders (design/marketing/sales) could understand what was being worked on and buy in.

• An accountability system, so users, staff, investors, advisors would ensure their input was at least received and considered.

• Engineers could understand what their goals were, and work autonomously.

• Balance our long term vision with short term priorities and immediate needs.

• EASY, RIGHT?

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THE RESULTING FRAMEWORK

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WARNINGTHIS IS WORKING SO FAR FOR US.

WILL IT WORK FOR YOU? WHO KNOWS.

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INGREDIENTS

• Product Vision Document

• Iteration Planning (Google Spreadsheet)

• Trello

• Good ‘ol Pivotal Tracker

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THE PRODUCT VISION

• PDF or Powerpoint.

• Speaks to the overall vision of your company

• Outlines what features are needed.

• Review and modify quarterly as you learn more.

• Should be used to evaluate every upcoming feature and proposed enhancement - how does it fit in?

Statement

User Needs

Functional Needs

Features

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ITERATION PLANNING

• Google spreadsheet that, for each sprint, states who is going to be working on what overall feature.

• Each tasking (cell) should be either new feature dev, new iterations of additional features, or core platform (bugs, technical debt, misc)

• Also states who (outside of eng. team) will be responsible for testing.

• Priorities change? Development taking too long? Look at and modify this document.

• Reviewed each sprint to plan for upcoming sprint.

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TRELLO

• Best solution we’ve found for flexible organization + management.

• A identically-structured board is created for each major feature.

• Initial specs, user feedback, and team suggestions are posted in here.

• Trello allows for discussion/voting/tracking of individual items.

• Everyone can see the status of all items, and filter out theirs (not easily- Trello fix this!)

• This is used daily.

Here’s how we’ve laid out Trello Boards

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PIVOTAL TRACKER

• Pivotal is what engineers are/will be working on.

• Pivotal should only contain:What is being worked on this sprint.Bugs.Technical Debt.Internal needs + misc.

• Icebox is triaged regularly, backlog is monitored for what should be back in Trello or prioritized.

• Updates from Pivotal are fed into Hipchat

• Pivotal is used by engineers every hour.

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AND NOW, WE DANCE.

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LARGER PRODUCT DISCUSSIONS

• Happens on a monthly basis.

• Discuss the larger strategic moves, metrics, and where we are at in the product vision.

• What are the top 3 priorities each month for the next 90 days?

• Compare against product vision: Where does it fit?

• Review Iteration Planning: When should we work on it?

• At end of meeting: Do we have buy-in that we’re working on the right things?

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SPRINT PLANNING MEETINGS

• Review Iteration Planning to review upcoming sprints.

• Triage appropriate Trello Boards:

• Accept or Reject User + Team Feedback.

• Review User Feedback + Future Enhancements lists: Move appropriate items into Next Iteration (what we’ll do the next time we work on this feature) or Future Enhancements (we agree this is important to do, but not immediately)

• Ensure full team is aware of results and plans accordingly (aka queue up design, brief feature tech lead on context, etc).

• At end of meeting: Do we have a clear idea of exactly what will be done next sprint?

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SPRINT!

• Tech Lead on particular feature opens Trello, moves Next Iteration to Under Development, creates stories in Pivotal.

• Tech lead meets with designer to ensure all creative assets are understood.

• Work.

• Tech lead works with test lead(s) for acceptance.

• Sprint progress discussed at daily stand-up.

• Sprint Show and Tell reviews both what was built this sprint, and what is being done next sprint.

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BUGS AND FEEDBACK

• Repeat 30X: “Bugs go into Pivotal, Feedback into Trello.”

• Bugs are put into the Icebox in Pivotal, engineering lead triages and prioritizes (including modifying the current sprint)

• Feedback, from major suggestions to minor tweaks, are put straight into Trello.

• For major features, full-team internal test/feedback sessions + Alpha User test group are still utilized, with results being triaged between Trello (good idea) and Pivotal (great idea, we really should do this now).

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WHAT WE’VE FOUND

• By keeping all of this open, everyone can review and understand at varying levels what is being done.

• Discussions can be bounded appropriately (what is our long term vision vs. what are we working on the next 90 days vs. what improvements are we making to this feature)

• Everyone understands what tools they should interact with (e.g. engineering is handled through pivotal, user feedback captured in Trello, etc).

• We can ensure the product is moving forward.

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EVERYBODY’S HAPPY.

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JUST REMEMBER

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WE’RE HUMAN

• Deviations will happen. Products are flammable. Development will take longer. This process is meant to be accommodate and be as resilient as possible.

• YMMV: Take this as a baseline, useful ideas, or an example of what never to do. We won’t be offended.

• Above all else, communicating + setting expectations is key to product development.

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CONTACTUALLY.COM

Prepared by Zvi Band, [email protected]

@skeevis

Join us, we’re hiring.