Archive for November, 2012

NPS a great way to help the PO to structure the product backlog - Part I

Posted: November 26, 2012 in Agile, Product Development, Scrum, Software Development
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Hi guys, this post will be dedicated to all product managers out there. I will split this post into two parts, the second part will be written very soon .

Lately I had some discussions with some friends about “Customer Loyalty” and I realized most companies out there do not have a proper metric to measure “Customer Loyalty”. Companies do not have a metric in place to inform them about customer happiness in the product.

Most of them told me their products have the possibility for the customer to give feedback, but when I asked them if it is possible to have a metric that reflects customer happiness, the answer was unanimous: NO. At this point there is no possibility for them to measure how the customers are happy, neither to measure whether the product is performing on the market.

Some of them were asking why is it important to have a metric to measure the customer loyalty? In my opinion, the answer can be easy: the best marketing tool is “mouth to mouth marketing” that’s why it is so crucial to know what our customers think about our product. A good reference can bring more customers on-board more likely than a bad reference which can destroy possible ones. Having a metric that is able to measure this is quite essential in order to be able to improve customer satisfaction.

Naturally after explaining the reasoning they were asking me what would be my suggestion. I believe there are several options how to measure customer satisfaction. I explained what one of my clients implemented in most of their products. They did implement NPS – Net Promoter Score.

Implementing NPS was easier for the company to analyze user feedback and product problems; Based on this, the company could decide which action to take in order to improve customer happiness. NPS can also provide a stable measurement of business performance that can be compared across products, business units or even across industries, allowing the company to better understand what kind of portfolio does it have.

But what is “NPS” ? Net Promoter is a customer loyalty metric. The Net Promoter Score is obtained by asking customers a single question: “How likely is it that you would recommend our product to a friend or a colleague?”. The rating scale is 0 to 10 , where 10 is “extremely likely” and 0 is “not likely at all”. Based on the responses, customers are categorized into three groups: Promoters, Passives and Detractors.

A detractor is someone who will give negative references about your product. As an example I can use the situation when I went to a restaurant and spread the bad word about the service to my friends. The passives are people that do not complain neither promote your product. The promoters are the ones that spread a positive references about the product/service. These customers always come back and consume more of your products/services. To obtain a Net Promoter score (NPS) we must subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.

Here you can find some companies that are using already NPS:

The most important proposed benefits of this method derive from simplifying and communicating the objective of creating more “Promoters” and fewer “Detractors” — a concept that is claimed to be far simpler to understand and act on. Using this metric a company can know exactly what is the percentage of users that act as Promoters, Passives or Detractors. It is a great way to collect user feedback in a structured way identifying priorities that should be taking into account for the next interactions/releases, however this will be discussed in the second part of this blog.

Thank you,
Luis

Using Journeys Lines for Retrospective

Posted: November 19, 2012 in Agile, Retrospectives, Scrum, Software Development
Tags: ,
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Hi guys, my next iteration retrospective is coming.

Since I ran out of good ideas for the retrospective I decided to get advice from my “Sensei”, he is a cool guy always ready to help us when we need. Below you can see the conversation between us.

Luis: Good morning Sensei, do you have time?
Sensei: Sure how can I help you?

Luis: You know our next Iteration is almost over and I am thinking about good exercises for our retrospective. I am wondering if you could help me.
Sensei: Sure, but before we start can you please tell me how the iteration went? I would like to understand what did happen during the iteration so that I can give you better ideas.

Luis: Sure. This iteration was a bit complicated, there were a lot of things happening, a lot of different emotions I could almost compare it with a Roller Coaster.
Sensei: Hummmm I see… And what kind of exercise you think would suit to this retrospective?

Luis: Like I said, it was almost comparable to a Roller Coaster, so I believe something that would capture what really happened during the iteration… I don’t know maybe some simple way to visualize the energy during the iteration… I think everyone would benefit if they could see and understand how others felt with all those changes. I think it is good to show our strengths and weaknesses to others, it shows to others that we are normal human beings like them.
Sensei: Good, see it seems you have a lot of info there… What kind of exercises did you think on your own?

Luis: I thought about several ones, but to be honest I think none of them would capture the essence of what I am looking for…
Sensei: I am seeing one that could be quite useful, but I do not want to give you the straight answer… Let´s think a bit together. I do remember about a specific kickoff that you had some months ago. I remember that you did an exercise that fits to all of that didn’t you?

Luis: Hummmmm are you talking about the “Journey Line”? But that exercise is used for kick off not for a retrospective…
Sensei: Well what would be the worse thing that could happen if you try to adapt the exercise for a retrospective?

Luis: Well I think the worse that can happen is to have a poor retrospective, but I can always see it as a positive experience and learn what did it go wrong and change it for the next time… One of the Agile values is courage so I guess trying this would support this value.
Sensei: Good approach. So what will you change in order to be a good exercise for retrospective?

Luis: Well the original exercise is typically used in Kickoff meetings, its a good way to show to others a bit about ourselves. Basically each one of us draw a line since we got born until today, showing the positive and the negative times of our life, like is shown here:


Taken from “Coaching Agile Teams WorkShop by Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayed

Sensei: Yes, I do agree but what are the changes that you will do in order to be a good exercise for a retrospective?

Luis: Hum I am thinking maybe instead of mapping our life, maybe mapping our emotions/happenings during the iteration. How about?
Sensei: Sounds good, but on the kickoff meeting the exercise was more for an informative purpose, retrospectives should have an outcome. Retrospectives should terminate with a list of improvements. What are you planning to do about it?

Luis: That is a really good point… Humm let me think a bit about this over a coffee. I will come back soon.

(After 10m)
Luis: Ok, I guess I got some ideas.
Sensei: Tell me about them.

Luis: I have a theory that I need to test… But lets start from here, all team members will draw their lines, I am almost sure that some of the lines will “hit” in some common events. It will be easy to see it. After that I can ask the team members to vote the top biggest problem that affected most the iteration. After we identify the problem we can do a normal exercise to find out how can we improve it in the future. What do you think?
Sensei: Well it seems that you found an exercise for your next retrospective . Let me know how it went. Remember even if the outcome of your experience is not perfect, there is no problem, learn from it and improve it next time. Learning is the key action.

This is how I got some fresh ideas for my next retrospective.

Hope you have enjoyed,

Best Regards,

Luis

Is the organization truly agile?

Posted: November 12, 2012 in Agile, Scrum, Software Development
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Hi guys, I spent my last two weeks in Portugal where I had the opportunity to give two workshops. The first one can be found here: “Why to move to Agile” and the second one here: “Product Owner“. Soon you can find dedicated blogs about these presentations. There were several discussions about how difficult it is to change into an Agile culture.

Sometimes companies are not yet ready to change. In these situations we need to decide if we want to help companies to understand that a change is a must or we will start to look for a new job where companies are eager to implement Agile. During these workshops I had some ideas that I wanted to share with all of you. Imagine that you have an initial conversation with a person in a company where you have just started to work. How can you see if the organization is truly agile? I had some ideas about what you can ask to see if the organization is truly Agile.

You can start to ask about concrete aspects, for example how often is the product released to the customer; If they release the product several times per year it is a good sign. Do they have a ready product that could be ship-able at the end of each iteration? Or is lengthy regression testing phase needed? A truly Agile organization can release a product at the end of each iteration if they want. If regression testing is needed, there is a space for improvement. Who is the ultimate responsible person for the quality? Is it the team or some steering group? In a truly Agile organization the team is the ultimate responsible for the quality. When a product owner accepts the stories as DONE it means that everything was accomplished in order to have the maximum quality in the product. I believe the organization does not need anyone else to put the stamp “Ready to Release”.

Then you can ask more about teams structure. Is all team collocated? Is the product owner located with the team? How reachable is the product owner? Nowadays it is quite difficult to find a team that is collocated, however if you want to take the maximum advantage of Agile, teams should collocated with the product owner and this should be always available to answer all questions made by the team. Another interesting question that can be asked: “Is the team able to deliver software independently?” Or are the teams separated into several different teams like “development”, “testing”, “automation”, etc. I refer this question here because I saw several examples during my professional life where companies say they do Agile but in reality they just call themselves “Agile”, being all their practices normal waterfall techniques.
You can try to ask some “open questions”, these questions will serve to analyse the company´s vision. You can ask what is the organization´s vision related to Agile; Is Agile just a project management methodology or is it more a management philosophy? Unfortunately many companies see Agile as a project management “thing”, they really do not understand how powerful an Agile and Lean philosophy can be. Another interesting question to be asked is how do they measure the Agility of their organization! And what is the plan to expand it even more. Of course these are open and no right answer type of questions but it would give you an insight how the organization is serious about Agile.

To finalize I would end in my opinion with an extremely important topic. Try to understand what is the organization´s view about “Command and Control” approach versus “Empowerment of people”. This is extremely important, true Agile cannot be done if you do not give all the freedom to people. Empowering people is a powerful tool USE IT!

Please note there are no right or wrong answers… These ideas were just to help you to see how the company sees Agile. I hope these ideas were useful for you.

As always, your feedback and ideas are important. Please leave some comments ;)

Thanks,
Luis