A brief combined experience report touching on how the Product teams were positively impacted by adopting Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) when the Delivery organisation re-organised from Component (specialist) teams to Feature (truly multi-disciplinary teams that grew their own capability set)

1. ©2019 Rob Brown
Business Impacts of
Flipping Component
Delivery to Feature Delivery
London Business Agility - Flips, Trips and Slips
Rob Brown
2 May 2019

2. ©2019 Rob Brown
“Flipping!” and “FlipIT!”
–means more than just “flip” to South Africans ;-)
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3. ©2019 Rob Brown
“Business agility…”
“able to move in a direction at speed and
change direction without loss of speed”
–onelook.com
“organisation’s ability to adapt quickly and
effectively to environment changes”
–2nd year management textbook
“best way to secure the future is to create it”
–Peter Drucker
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4. ©2019 Rob Brown
“Real benefits…”
–what do *we* mean?
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5. ©2019 Rob Brown
Typical Component
Delivery Structure
Craig Larman
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6. ©2019 Rob Brown
Typical Feature
Delivery Structure
“Take 1 from each”
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7. ©2019 Rob Brown
Much More Than A Wrist Flip!
Looking From The Business Side
https://www.shropshirelive.com/news/2017/02/20/50-people-to-flip-pancakes-on-the-iron-bridge/
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8. ©2019 Rob Brown Earliest Version: 1962
“Product” Was Not Happy
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9. ©2019 Rob Brown
Some Similarities
Morale
Tension
“Product” experiences on “Delivery” speed and “Delivery” quality
“Prioritised Requirements” filtered through multiple people (layers, departments, locations)
Actual Product champion / Accountable executive visibility
Multiple Product Managers / Content Managers / Site Managers / Change Managers / etc
Location
Location
Face-to-face
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10. ©2019 Rob Brown
Some Differences
Revenue growth (hope)
New platform (green field)
Some pressure (try 3-7)
Risk of “fit for use”/NFR
vs Revenue protection (v. v. soon)
vs Legacy (huge)
vs Insane pressure
vs Issue of algorithm R&D
balancing with (“fit for purpose” +
“fit for use”)
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11. ©2019 Rob Brown
Recipes
Only time for 1 quick taster…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_Dancer
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12. ©2019 Rob Brown
Training:
1x Scrum Master
1x Product Owner - all “PO”’s, including Proxy
1x Team BDD - everyone codes
Daily Team Charts monitoring:
Sprint and Release Burndown
Product Backlog <-> Scenarios <-> User Stories <-> Acceptance Criteria; Churn
Coaching with Decreasing Frequency:
1-1’s with Scrum Master, Product Owner, Proxy Product Owner, Area Product Owner
4 Amigo BDD “Workshops”
Sprint Reviews
Coaching with Ad Hoc Frequency: Daily Scrum attendance, team members, “morale support team"
Pursue automated release
Post Team Formation,
“Intervention Ingredients”
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13. ©2019 Rob Brown
#2001_agilemanifesto
#2004_agileprinciples
4 Amigo’s Behaviour Driven
Development (BDD)
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14. ©2019 Rob Brown
Classic Software Development
Lifecycle (SDLC) Training
“BDD in Action” – John Ferguson Smart
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15. ©2019 Rob Brown
SDLC With 4 Amigo’s BDD
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16. ©2019 Rob Brown
4 Amigo’s
1 hour / day
Write the Scenario together (“pair program”)
Create and apply 1 single ubiquitous business language - f(MAGIC, language, thought, code, system)
Often Less Total Effort Than Attempting Classic SDLC (especially with layers of people)!
“Classic SDLC” is only trained that way, not in practice
“The Design of Design” - Fred Brooks
BDD is many things, including Capability Growth “For Free”!
Analysts write test scripts which actually run software (testing)
Testers write code to run software (coding)
Coders write requirement specifications and tests (analysis and testing)
“Business” can (eventually) do all 3 also by copy-paste (hacking)
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17. ©2019 Rob Brown
Evolution and
Emergence
Is emergency just emergence speeded up?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_Dancer
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18. ©2019 Rob Brown
Product Owner
Hierarchy
and WoW
Multiple releases
Product, operations, customers, end users
Quality
Strategic capacity
Impossible 7am-7pm coverage idea, now “done”
Happiness
Smoothness
Chief
Product
Owner / CxO
Lead
Product
Owner / HoD
Lead
Product
Owner / HoD
Team
Product
Owner
Team
Product
Owner
Team
Product
Owner
Team
Product
Owner
Team
Product
Owner
Team
Product
Owner
Proxy
PO
Proxy
PO
Proxy
PO
Proxy
PO
Proxy
PO
Proxy
PO
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19. ©2019 Rob Brown
!!Surprise!!
Revenue Protection
became
Revenue Generation!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_Dancer
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20. ©2019 Rob Brown
Challenges
Maintain to become best over time, becomes huge competitive advantage!
Amazon Web Services was once, after 12 years, 10 years ahead of all competitors in one basket!
Proxy Product Owner evolution
Top Of The House thinking and evidence
1-2 “seasoned big picture thinkers”
Constant vigilance and coaching
Newcomers need to be “principles entrenched”, preferably at selection stage
Succession
Head hunters
Amazon Web Services office now has an MS Azure office a short walk away…promising lots…and
Azure is much closer to AWS now :O
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