Dominica argues the need for more creative tension in order to make incredible change and walks through how LeanKit built a case to fix architecture issues.

1. @dominicad
Aligning Technical & Business Teams
Dominica
DeGrandis
Director, Training
& Coaching

2. Photo by Edmund Lowe Photography on Getty Images@dominicad
Finding peace in the Hoh Rainforest

3. Listening to an argument offsite
The Red House, Franklin, Tennessee
@dominicad

4. http://wowxwow.com/artist-interview/kevin-sloan-ai@dominicad
Spark creative tension vs. emotional tension
no progress w/o tension
More flamingo, less wound up tension

5. @dominicad
More features please
http://wowxwow.com/artist-interview/kevin-sloan-ai

6. @dominicad
Missed the release date

7. @dominicad
You did what?
3rd party
integration
impacts
ITOps

8. @dominicad
Commonality? Poor Communication

9. @dominicad
No one is trying to be a jerk
I DIDN’T
GET THE
MEMO

10. @dominicad
Webs of interdepedencies à unintended consequences

11. @dominicad
“Code will be used in ways we
cannot anticipate, in ways it was
not designed, and for longer
than it was ever intended.”
~Joshua Corman
https://www.ruggedsoftware.org/

12. “As a lifelong Ops
practitioner, I know we need
DevOps to make our work
humane.
In the past, I’ve worked
every holiday, on my
birthday, my spouse’s
birthday, and even on the
day my son was born.”
Nathan Shimek
Engineering Manager,
New Context
compliments of Gene Kim, Author, IT Revolution@dominicad

13. Architecture changes or features?
@dominicad

14. Architecture Challenges
Mutable state
Inefficient rendering
Assumptions on
availability of data
*ONE* code base
@dominicad

15. @dominicad
Refactor – take one
“Let’s kaizen the current code base”
Assembled long list of “shore-up”
style fixes
BUT - things quickly fell apart
List represented a lot of work & risk
Made no clear gains into new web
architecture

16. @dominicad
Refactor – take two
“Lets rewrite everything.”

17. @dominicad

18. Tested
Logged
Documented
Reviewed

19. @dominicad
Refactor – take three
What if we had the audacity to
do something incredible?
What would that look like?

20. @dominicad
Proof-of-Concept
The What
Board view in new web stack
The Why
Validate/invalidate assumptions
Will this change
• Enable teams to improve Cycle Time?
• Improve performance for users?
• Improve foundation for next-gen
features?

21. Cost of Delay compared to PoC - customer
OLD NEW
requests per
six weeks
seconds
per request
total time
(hours)
seconds
per request
total time
(hours)
difference
(hours)
Reduction to % value @ 300$/
hr
value @ $150/
hr
value @ $75/
hr
Home 51060 8.26 117.15 2.78 39.43 77.72 33.66% $‎ 23,317.40 $‎ 11,658.70 $‎ 5,829.35
Board
(10100058479)
83688 6.93 161.10 2.26 52.54 108.56 32.61% $‎ 32,568.58 $‎ 16,284.29 $‎ 8,142.15
Board
(10100071407)
83688 6.40 148.78 1.21 28.13 120.65 18.91% $‎ 36,195.06 $‎ 18,097.53 $‎ 9,048.77
Board
(10100619132)
83688 11.26 261.76 1.06 24.64 237.12 9.41% $‎ 71,134.80 $‎ 35,567.40 $‎ 17,783.70
Board
(10100063335)
83688 6.97 162.03 0.86 19.99 142.04 12.34% $‎ 42,611.14 $‎ 21,305.57 $‎ 10,652.79
Six Weeks One Year Two Years
Lower Bound $‎ 13,971.50 $‎ 121,132.86 $‎ 242,265.72
$‎ 23,613.05 $‎ 204,725.14 $‎ 409,450.29
Middle $‎ 27,942.99 $‎ 242,265.72 $‎ 484,531.45
$‎ 47,226.10 $‎ 409,450.29 $‎ 818,900.57
Upper Bound $‎ 55,885.98 $‎ 484,531.45 $‎ 969,062.89
$‎ 94,452.20 $‎ 818,900.57 $‎ 1,637,801.15
@dominicad
$‎ 1,637,801

22. Cost of Delay compared to PoC - prod
OLD NEW
requests per
six weeks
seconds
per request
total time
(hours)
seconds
per request
total time
(hours)
difference
(hours)
Reduction to % value @ 300$/
hr
value @ $150/
hr
value @ $75/
hr
Home 349,986 2.41 234.30 0.56 54.44 179.85 23.24% $‎ 53,956.18 $‎ 26,978.09 $‎ 13,489.04
Board (1) 1,168,080 3.28 1064.25 0.82 266.06 798.19 25.00% $‎ 239,456.40 $‎ 119,728.20 $‎ 59,864.10
Board (2) 1,168,080 2.95 957.18 0.91 295.26 661.91 30.85% $‎ 198,573.60 $‎ 99,286.80 $‎ 49,643.40
Board (3) 1,168,080 4.21 1366.00 1.36 441.27 924.73 32.30% $‎ 277,419.00 $‎ 138,709.50 $‎ 69,354.75
Board (4) 1,168,080 2.36 765.74 0.66 214.15 551.59 27.97% $‎ 165,478.00 $‎ 82,739.00 $‎ 41,369.50
Six Weeks One Year Two Years
Lower Bound $‎ 54,858.54 $‎ 475,623.57 $‎ 951,247.15
$‎ 82,843.79 $‎ 718,255.69 $‎ 1,436,511.38
Middle $‎ 109,717.09 $‎ 951,247.15 $‎ 1,902,494.30
$‎ 165,687.59 $‎
1,436,511.38
$‎ 2,873,022.77
Upper Bound $‎ 219,434.18 $‎
1,902,494.30
$‎ 3,804,988.59
$‎ 331,375.18 $‎
2,873,022.77
$‎ 5,746,045.53
@dominicad
$‎ 5,746,045

23. @dominicad

24. @dominicad
A3 Wall
~30cm x 42cm

25. @dominicad
(2 Teams x 2 Sweeps)
Board View Toolbar
Card Edit Home View
Activity Stream Filters
Notifications
Potential A3s delivered within a sweep
Note - not doing anything *new* from a user’s perspective.
But! Making app WAY faster

26. MKT MKTFIN
UXMKT
MKT MKT
SLS DEVUXUX
SLS CSS
QAUX
DEVOPS SLS
SLS
1
2
3
4
6
5
DEV
DEV
OPS
How the A3 is populated
Cost of Delay?
Impact to users?What benefits who?
What does feature do?
Sustainability impact? fine print /misc?

27. @dominicad
Lightening A3; Template last updated June 14, 2016
THEME:
Project Lightning
A3:
All Boards & Archive (Homescreen) Speed Improvement
SQUAD: Lightning AUTHOR: Jim Cowart DATE: 8/4/2016
PROBLEM STATEMENT ​What problem do we need to solve for customers and users (either internal or external)? CONSTRAINTS​ ​ What existing user workflows and technical constraints should Design Studio consider to design a solution?
The home screen in the LeanKit app is very slow to load and interact with, e.g. going from a board back to
the home screen requires a long wait that is increased with the growth in the number of boards that are in
the account.
Additionally, as we continue to build out homescreen capability to house information such as “mycards,”
user interaction with that portion of the app will continue to grow.
1.) Thumbnails may not be “rebuilt” as part of this effort and will be replaced by standard board image.
Note: try to pull stats on often is board preview/ template preview are used to help inform decision re.
removing preview as an option.
Data / boards will be served via pagination to support speedy load. Consider setting upper limits as a
starting point. Need to consider UX on this.
TARGET USERS​ ​Which personas are feeling pain now? What “job” are they “hiring” LeanKit to do? How is it not getting done? NEW USER EXPERIENCE ​ ​How will the interface (web, mobile, API) and user workflow change?
As a Director of IT Ops, I need a way to quickly navigate from one board to another board via the home
screen (via filter or recent boards) so that I can easily interact with information across the many teams that I
work with.
As IT Ops Otis, I need a way to quickly navigate from home to the boards I use on a daily basis.
As PM Pam, I need a way to quickly navigate from one board to another board via the home screen so that I
can easily interact with information on our roadmap and team boards.
The workflow remains the same, with the following exceptions:
1.) The page will load faster
2.) Scrolling “All Boards” and “Archive” will be paged, meaning that the first (for example) 25 boards
would be loaded under those sections, and the rest would appear as the user scrolls to see more.
The UX improvement that is required doesn’t change the steps in the workflow, rather makes those
steps faster.
3.) Recent Boards is now sorted chronologically
COST OF DELAY​ ​ What is the opportunity cost to users if we don’t solve this next sweep? How should we measure success? MARKETABILITY OR SUSTAINABILITY IMPACT ​ ​How does Leankit benefit? What edition does it best fit into & why?
The six-week cost of delay for this ranges from $20,649.01 - $127,748.21.
Over two years, the range of cost of delay is $179,026.93 - $1,107,577.00.
This is calculated at 15% of the total cost of delay related to the theme.
We can measure success by running the same comparisons (using the same hardware used to create these
numbers) once the updated Home view is in place.
Loss of a deal…
Both. It benefits LeanKit customers by increasing the speed of the application, and it benefits LeanKit
internally by removing technical debt that is slowing down feature delivery.

28. @dominicad
Lightening A3
Template last updated June 14, 2016
THEME: A3: SQUAD: AUTHOR: DATE:
PROBLEM STATEMENT ​What problem do we need to solve for customers and users (either internal or external)? CONSTRAINTS​ ​ What existing user workflows and technical constraints should Design Studio consider to design a solution?
TARGET USERS​ ​Which personas (and Editions) are feeling pain now? What “job” are they “hiring” LeanKit to do? NEW USER EXPERIENCE ​ ​How will the interface (web, mobile, API) and user workflow change?
COST OF DELAY​ ​ What is the opportunity cost to users if we don’t solve this next sweep? How should we measure success? VALIDATION & MEASUREMENT PLAN​ ​How do we make sure that we solved the problem?

29. and this is how
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/avoiding-the-alignment-trap-in-it/

30. @dominicad
What’s not working well
Everyone wants to be involved with
everything. Decoupling is hard
Circling back to check CoD calculation
to see how close assumptions were. $
A3’s could be broken down smaller.

31. @dominicad
The point
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/avoiding-the-alignment-trap-in-it/
Interdependencies create unintended consequences
Wound up emotional tension puts us in survive mode
Creative tension inspires audacious ideas
#GoFlamingo
Argument for both depending on context.
Peace & quiet have a place in creative work.

32. Books: A3’s, Exec Alignment, Tension
Dominica
DeGrandis
Director, Training
& Coaching
www.ddegrandis.com