A friend asked me recently to help with a project as his team is on a time crunch and must present to investors in 2 months. This deadline cannot be moved. In this article, read how I managed to get the software development project back in track in a day.
SaaS startup companies with software development projects focus on getting the right developers and QA testers to complete the project. Many companies hire offshore companies due to budget.
The offshore companies may or many not be on agile, but want to stay quiet and let their customer initiate the schedule.
A friend asked me recently to help with a project as his team is on a time crunch and must present to investors in 2 months. This deadline cannot be moved. There is a mountain of development work to be done still and they needed an organized approach. The offshore developers stayed quiet to wait for a schedule to be provided.
With my agile experience, a very short notice and not quite knowing what software my friend’s company was developing, I visited my friend office to meet with his team to see how I can help. After 15mins discussion, it came clear to me. The team did know what they need to deliver, but was not able to articulate it, i.e. frame it in deliverable language. It is important to put the project and output into a structured frame work and implement.
Within half a day, I structured an agile project plan for them. Here was the break down on how I did it:
Step 1: How much time do you have?
I asked the team when was the deadline? Then I put down the weeks left required to go the finish line. It was important to put the ‘date’ of every Fri leading to the deadline.
Step 2: What are your milestones?
I asked the team what are the key milestones, i.e. the key deliverables. The team brainstormed and identify 10 milestones to be achieved.
Step 3: Use the Agile 3 main attributes
In order to priortize and quantify the deliverables, the deliverables must contain the 3 following elements:
Rate the business value it will deliver
Rate the complexity of the deliverable
Rate the dependency of the deliverable, i.e. what does the particular deliverable depend on and from which other deliverable.
By ranking each milestone with the 3 main attributes, the team were able to rank the deliverables in order. Note that this might change when we get into breaking up the user stories. Defining priority is iterative.
Step 4: Map it!
Once we know the # of weeks left and the key milestones in terms of priority, I facilitated the team to whiteboard it in a table format. Across is the # of weeks left with the Friday date at end of each box. Down was the milestones listed in priority.
Step 5: User story time, break it up!
With the milestones on the left, I asked the team to describe what needs to be done in ‘the user will do <what>’ or ‘the system will do <what>?’ and put them on sticky notes. Each sticky note will have a milestone#, the description of the user story and if the user story is complex, dependent or high in business value.
Step 6: Rearrange it!
After the team wrote out all the user stories across each milestone line, they started rearranging them based on business value, dependency and complexity.
Step 7: Rate the effort (user story points)
Then I introduced the effort rating system 1,2,4 and 8. 8 being the most difficult to do and take the most time. The team was able to score most of the user stories 1,2 and 4. There was one user story that was scored as 8. I told them to break it up to two 4s.
Step 8: SCRUM board done!
Without specifically calling out we were using agile methodology, the team followed my lead and within a few hours laid out a 2 months plan, in 2-week delivery cycles (sprints) and was able to articulate what exactly was needed to be delivered by end of each sprint.
We clapped and took many pictures of the whiteboard to input it into a project management tool.
It is important to establish cadence to execute and stick with the plan. We identified who is going to lead the daily 15 minutes standup, weekly status report, daily grooming sessions and how end of sprint demo and regroup for following sprint would look like.
In Conclusion
The short notice but ad hoc Sprint planning session was highly successful due to a few factors: First, the team collaborated well and trusted my lead. They were willing to listen and allowed me to provide guidance and direction. Second, the team members were clear on their roles and worked well together. Third, the team members were all skilled in their own way and were played their own role well.
This was one of my most successful sprint planning sessions and the team worked like a well oiled engine.
How Target Align Helps Startups with Agile OKRs
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Set clear, measurable OKRs aligned with business strategy.
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Foster alignment between leadership and teams by breaking down top-level objectives into actionable key results.
By using Target Align, startups can eliminate confusion, streamline goal-setting, and drive sustainable growth.
If you’re interested in learning more about OKRs and its implementation, sign up for Target Align’s video course. For more resources, visit www.targetalign.com and check out their OKR 101 material.
