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How we used Lean thinking to pivot a project away from uncertainty and towards success

How we used Lean thinking to pivot a project away from uncertainty and towards success

The Lean approach champions quick, cheap experiments designed to test hypotheses. It seeks to spend as few resources as possible determining what to build and then, once discovered, to pull back hard and build the thing right.

However, typically in our environment, we scope a project, assume it's the right thing to build, try to build it right, and do whatever's necessary to get it into production, which takes incredible effort.

During this session, I'll tell the story of how we applied Lean principles to pivot a project away from our traditional many-people/many-months approach and towards a resource-constrained discovery phase. Our output was both working software which the stakeholder team could use to validate their assumptions about project direction, and a much better understanding of several early technical uncertainties that represented risk to the original project.

DevOpsDays DC

June 11, 2015
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  1. @marcesher   Uncertainties 8 •  InstallaKon  and  configuraKon   • 

    Security  requirements   •  AuthenKcaKon  and  authorizaKon   •  CustomizaKon  
  2. @marcesher   Confronting Ignoring Uncertainty 9 •  Repeatable  installaKon  of

     uncustomized   soSware  in  produc*on   •  Implement  all  security  controls   •  Auth…  No  Promises   •  CustomizaKon    Maybe  later  
  3. @marcesher   Pivot proposal: Development Approach 29 •  4-­‐6  week

     discovery  phase  w/  small  team   •  No  producKon…  yet   •  Focus  on  uncertainKes   •  Leave  parts  of  each  requirement  undone   •  Build  “Just  enough  to  use  and  learn”   •  Real  users,  ASAP  
  4. @marcesher   Pivot proposal: Delivery 30 •  Deliver  a  mix

     of  soSware  and  documentaKon   •  Staffing  proposal  based  on  discovery  phase   •  TransiKon  responsibility  to  customer  team  
  5. @marcesher   Enabling this transformation 36 •  Customer  was  a

     fantasKc  partner   •  Real  users  early   •  Frequent  project  check-­‐ins   •  Unit  tests  and  conKnuous  integraKon  early   •  Eye  toward  future  staff  
  6. @marcesher   What didn’t go well 38 •  Took  a

     while  for  customer  to  use  the  app   •  Not  everyone  on  board  with  “OpKonality”   •  Bo*lenecks  
  7. @marcesher   “Whenever you hear of a new IT project

    starting up with a large budget, teams of tens or hundreds of people, and a timeline of many months before something actually gets shipped, you can expect the project will go over time and budget and not deliver the expected value.” - Lean Enterprise 39 My plea: enable experimentation