Vision stage

Vision Board

Approval for next stage

Achieved through...

Short personal brainstorm

Discovery stage

Understand user needs

Understand business & technical landscape

Product Idea

User goals and high-level activity map

Approval for next stage

Output: Product idea

Two pages maximum

Summary

Objectives

Key success metrics

Financial drivers

Internal stakeholders

Operational drivers

Quality drivers

Timescales

Customers

Potential suppliers

Risks & issues

Assumptions & constraints

Features

Resource required

Costs / revenue & savings

Output: User goals and high level activity map

More information from Thoughtworks.com

Achieved through...

Workshops

Simple mock ups

Paper prototypes

Plenty of whiteboard diagrams

Alpha Stage

Build a working prototype

Test design approach

Test technologies

Form a team

Understand beta requirements

Working basic system, with limited functionality

User story map

Plans for beta & live service

Understanding of legacy systems

Analysis of user needs research

Approval for next stage

Output: User story map

More information from Thoughtworks.com

Output: Mockups

Eg. using Balsamiq mockups

Output: Interactive prototypes

Built in HTML

Using a standard code library

Or using a tool such as Framer

Achieved through...

A small core team

of makers and and stakeholders

led by the product owner

rapidly iterating solutions

and demonstrating each iteration

Beta stage

Build a fully working service

Test with users

Iterate until it's ready to go live

A working end-to-end service

A product backlog

A user testing plan

Accurate metrics to monitor KPIs

Approval for next stage

Output: Product backlog

Image credit: Barry Overeem

Achieved through...

A product owner (or team of owners)

leading a team of developers, designers,

and other specialists

rapidly iterating solutions

and testing each iteration with users

Essentials for successful projects

The Product Owner

• represents the business
• has a vision for the product
• makes decisions
• influences releases
• provides visibility to business leadership
• motivates the team
• maximises value to the business

Scrum Alliance: Characteristics of a product owner

Continuous communication

Ideally co-located team - as small as possible

Remote teams will need a permanently open channel

Shared communication / documentation systems across the whole team

Short iteration periods

Each sprint sets up the next one with all the information it needs

Tasks to be included in each sprint are chosen by the product owner

Sprints always end with a retrospective to identify process improvements

Just good enough documentation

... so that analysts know what is essential for the developers to work from

... so that developers know what to build, and how it will be tested

... so that testers know what should be tested

... so that the product owner knows what to expect

Definition of ready

The criteria that a user story must meet before being accepted into the next sprint

• Is the user story independent of any other story?
• Is the user story delivering value to the stakeholders?
• Has the user story size been estimated?
• Is the user story small?
• Is the user story testable?

Definition of done

Activities required to complete a backlog item (example):

• Code commented and checked in
• Peer reviewed and meeting development standards
• Builds without errors
• Unit tests written and passing
• Deployed to system test environment and passed system tests
• Passed UAT and signed off as meeting requirements
• Any build/deployment/configuration changes implemented/documented/communicated
• Relevant documentation/diagrams produced or updated

All about agile checklist