1 Agile Practitioners 2013 Product Roadmap, Planning and Launch in an Agile Environment Jan. 30, 2013 Eilon Reshef / VP Products and R&D / Co-Founder

2 Introduction

3 A SaaS platform for managing and publishing rich product information The Webcollage Solution

4 SaaS Product Content Management

5 Customers: Large Brands

6 Subscribers: Large Retailers

7 Webcollage: Some More Context Software-as-a-Service A.k.a., On Demand Large Customers B2B Continuous Delivery 2-week cycles, Kanban-like Web Content Management and Delivery Established Startup 70 people $10m-$20m revenue Profitable, growing >10 years

8 Agile Principles and Product Management

9 Old-Style Development Cycle Modern Development Cycle Historical vs. Modern Development Cycles Release 3.0 Release 4.0 Release 48 Release 36

10 Old-Style vs. Modern Product Cycles Launch Beta, Release, PR Develop Design, Develop, QA Plan Negotiate, Prioritize, Schedule How does the product “cycle” look like in an agile environment?

11 Use old-style product cycles but a modern development cycles Makes developers feel good (“we have dailies”) but misses key benefits in agile cycles Mostly, no real customer feedback until too late A product manager is not a customer Points for consideration Software vs. construction SaaS vs. on-premise software The Easy, but Wrong Answer Release 3.0 Release 4.0

12 No defined period for planning Limited visibility into release schedule becomes more evident Hard to predict effort Hard to predict scope Depth rightfully decided along the way What does a roadmap look like? Modern Cycles: Planning Challenges Release 48 Release 36 Launch Beta, Release, PR Develop Design, Develop, QA Plan Negotiate, Prioritize, Schedule ?

13 No defined period for, launch The product is working, but the documentation is not yet complete… do we launch now? It’s working, but so many customers mentioned they need X When do we incorporate customer feedback? Modern Cycles: Launch Challenges Release 48 Release 36 Launch Beta, Release, PR Develop Design, Develop, QA Plan Negotiate, Prioritize, Schedule ?

14 Agile enables experiments Many names Proof of Concept Minimum Viable Product Minimum Sellable Product … Modern Cycles: Opportunities Release 48 Release 36 Launch Beta, Release, PR Develop Design, Develop, QA Plan Negotiate, Prioritize, Schedule ?

15 Planning

16 Planning: Roadmaps Fact 1: Hard customer commitments reduce agility Corollary 1 If you’ve committed to customers on the content of most of your bandwidth, you’re back to old-style cycles Degree of Freedom Commitment 1 Commitment 2

17 Planning at Webcollage We meet annually to decide on high level priorities for the year Involves budget, hiring, sales planning, business development, … We create a “straw man” framework What we think will more or less happen on a quarterly basis We keep tons of slack Slack grows as the year proceeds Our crystal ball distorts from far away

18 We have high-level roadmap presentations that show what we’re planning for the year We are not committing that particular features will actually be developed We are not committing to particular timelines We are doing a lot to make our customers happy, and they know it When we have to give hard commitments, we do it but it rarely happens This needs to be part of the corporate culture Is it possible to avoid hard commitments Well, Webcollage does work with the largest brands out there… External Roadmaps at Webcollage

19 Internal Planning (Cont.) We meet each quarter to review priorities and new learnings We recreate straw man plans for the upcoming quarter We keep slack at ~50% Quarterly plans are generally kept internal Not shared with customers Day to day planning happens in a relatively standard fashion Wish List, Backlog, “In Play” (sprint equivalent)

20 Launch

21 When do you “launch”? Product Launch Release 48 Release 36

22 Internal Communication at Webcollage Two-week development cycles We hold broad weekly meetings Products, R&D, Professional Services, Pre-Sales, Product Marketing, Operations, Technical Services, Technical Support Not sales Up to one hour Discussion Noteworthy features in last iteration Noteworthy features in upcoming iteration Tasks Create decks, communicate further Bi-weekly “what’s new” (We found out that information doesn’t bubble well enough)

23 What’s Coming Dashboard (Pre-Launch)

24 Last Version Dashboard

25 Rollout Approach: Gradual Rollout Very rarely can large features be ready 360° out of the gate Training Online demos Key Approach: Feature Flag Turns Feature on or off Globally (configuration) For individual customers Common Scenario Feature flag off: internal users only on Feature flag off by default: select customers on “Alpha”/“Beta” “Canary Installation” Feature flag on by default: off for select customers Data migration “Release Candidate” On for all Applicable to large features, not to bug fixes

26 Key Communication Techniques In-application announcements Controllable at a customer (tenant) level s, Webinars, Weekly/Monthly/Quarterly Meetings Press Releases

27 Beta Wording (weak)

28 Feedback Loop: Closed vs. Open Iterations Closed Iterations (Committed Content) [Scrum] Open Iterations (Flexible Content) [Kanban] Feedback

29 Agile Opportunities Proof of Concepts Launch, Listen, Learn MVP, MSP Not (really) available in old-style product cycles With Agile, gambling is not required

30 Traditional Approach Agile Approach Define “depth” based on multiple criteria Type and number of planned users Extent of planned use Visibility of new feature “User Stories” are just, well, fairy tales Feature Depth UseSell Compete

31 Defining Feature Depth Can and should iterate on depth Settling down mid way is common, and fine Feature Completeness Finesse Robustness

32 Not covered here… :-) A/B and multivariate testing Very strong concepts, but mostly applicable to B2C Pre-launch “traps” Also mostly a B2C concept Less suitable for an established company Marketing and support automation communication, surveys Marketo/Eloqua/Hubspot/… Help desk, online chat, automated feedback, suggestion boards … Applicable to all web applications, regarding of Agile

33 Thank You