“zero day exploit: the old management mafia p0wned your product!”

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“Zero day exploit:the old management mafiap0wned your product!”Governance in Product Management — An Agile Overview

onsdag 17 oktober 12


Once upon a time...



Governance is...WHAT decisions are seen asimportant in the organization

WHO is allowed to makeor influence those decisions

HOW those decisions are made and accountability is tracked

(Summarized and paraphrased from materials by Institute On Governance, iog.ca)



What kind of decisions?

Who belongs to the team?What should I do today?

What infrastructure for the product?

Which project is most important?

Is this feature ready for release?

What tools should we use?

How many story points to assign?What technologies should we use?

How much can we invest in product R&D?

Build or buy?

Which proposed feature is most valuable?

What is the corporate strategy?



Agile and governance•Doesn’t remove the need to make decisions•Doesn’t remove the need for governance•But may (will!) change structures and style of governance

•WHO from Line manager to Team•WHEN from monthly to daily•HOW from management decision to group agreement;

from reports to transparent metrics•etc...



Complexity

A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making

harvard business review • november 2007 page 4

new cell phone might emphasize feature A overfeature B, but an alternative plan—emphasizingfeature C—might be equally valuable.

Another example is the search for oil ormineral deposits. The effort usually requires ateam of experts, more than one place will po-tentially produce results, and the location ofthe right spots for drilling or mining involvescomplicated analysis and understanding ofconsequences at multiple levels.

Entrained thinking is a danger in compli-cated contexts, too, but it is the experts(rather than the leaders) who are prone toit, and they tend to dominate the domain.When this problem occurs, innovative sugges-tions by nonexperts may be overlooked ordismissed, resulting in lost opportunities. Theexperts have, after all, invested in building

their knowledge, and they are unlikely totolerate controversial ideas. If the contexthas shifted, however, the leader may needaccess to those maverick concepts. To getaround this issue, a leader must listen to theexperts while simultaneously welcomingnovel thoughts and solutions from others.Executives at one shoe manufacturer didthis by opening up the brainstorming pro-cess for new shoe styles to the entire com-pany. As a result, a security guard submitteda design for a shoe that became one of theirbest sellers.

Another potential obstacle is “analysisparalysis,” where a group of experts hits astalemate, unable to agree on any answersbecause of each individual’s entrainedthinking—or ego.

Working in unfamiliar environments canhelp leaders and experts approach decisionmaking more creatively. For instance, we putretail marketing professionals in several mili-tary research environments for two weeks.The settings were unfamiliar and challenging,but they shared a primary similarity with theretail environment: In both cases, the market-ers had to work with large volumes of datafrom which it was critical to identify smalltrends or weak signals. They discovered thatthere was little difference between, say,handling outgoing disaffected customers andanticipating incoming ballistic missiles. Theexercise helped the marketing group learnhow to detect a potential loss of loyaltyand take action before a valued customerswitched to a competitor. By improving theirstrategy, the marketers were able to retainfar more high-volume business.

Games, too, can encourage novel thinking.We created a game played on a fictionalplanet that was based on the culture of a realclient organization. When the executives“landed” on the alien planet, they were askedto address problems and opportunities facingthe inhabitants. The issues they encounteredwere disguised but designed to mirror realsituations, many of which were controversialor sensitive. Because the environment seemedso foreign and remote, however, the playersfound it much easier to come up with freshideas than they otherwise might have done.Playing a metaphorical game increases man-agers’ willingness to experiment, allows themto resolve issues or problems more easily

The Cynefin Framework

The Cynefin framework helps leaders determine the prevailing operative context so that they can make appropriate choices. Each domain requires different actions.

Simple

and

complicated

contexts assume an ordered universe, where cause-and-effect relationships are per-ceptible, and right answers can be deter-mined based on the facts.

Complex

and

chaotic

contexts are unordered—there is no immediately apparent relationship between cause and effect, and the way forward is determined based on emerg-ing patterns. The ordered world is the

world of fact-based management; the unordered world represents pattern-based management.

The very nature of the fifth context—

disorder

—makes it particularly difficult to recognize when one is in it. Here, multi-ple perspectives jostle for prominence, factional leaders argue with one another, and cacophony rules. The way out of this realm is to break down the situation into constituent parts and assign each to one of the other four realms. Leaders can then make decisions and intervene in contextually appropriate ways.

D. J. Snowden and M. E. Boone. A leader’s framework for decision making. Harvard Business Review, November 2007.



Source: Agile Finland coaching circle, MvW, 2012



Sources: Agile Finland coaching circle, MvW, 2012 & “BCS”, Graham Oakes, 2012



“What is the timeframe?”What is the timeframe? Developer Group Project Manager

GroupDevelopment

Manager GroupDomain

Business Exec

IT Exec

Product Owner

Project Manager

Policy Unit

Team

Individual

Scrum Master

Enterprise Architect

Func. Manager

Simple Complicated Complicated

17,8 % −2,2 % −12,2 %

4,4 % −10,6 % 4,4 %

−10,6 % 19,4 % −0,6 %

−6,3 % −1,3 % 3,8 %

0,0 % 0,0 % 0,0 %

−9,7 % 0,3 % 10,3 %

0,6 % −4,4 % −4,4 %

3,8 % −1,3 % −1,3 %

0,0 % 0,0 % 0,0 %

0,0 % 0,0 % 0,0 %

Source: “BCS”, Graham Oakes, 2012N = 43



“What are the requirements?”What are the

requirements?Developer Group Project Manager

GroupDevelopment

Manager Group

Domain

Business Exec

IT Exec

Product Owner

Project Manager

Policy Unit

Team

Individual

Scrum Master

Enterprise Architect

Func. Manager

Complex Complicated Complicated

3,0 % −7,0 %

−2,0 % −2,0 %

−3,0 % 17,0 %

20,0 % −5,0 %

−2,0 % −2,0 %

−11,0 % 4,0 %−6,0 % −6,0 %

0,0 % 0,0 %

0,0 % 0,0 %

0,0 % 0,0 %




“Who makes estimates?”Who makes estimates? Developer Group Project Manager

GroupDevelopment

Manager Group

Domain

Business Exec

IT Exec

Product Owner

Project Manager

Policy Unit

Team

Individual

Line/Dev Manager

Scrum Master

Enterprise Architects

Chaos Chaos Complicated

−1,7 % −1,7 % −1,7 %

−11,9 % 15,8 % −11,9 %

−10,7 % 5,9 % −4,5 %

−2,1 % −5,4 % 2,9 %

0,0 % −6,7 % −6,7 %

9,7 % 1,9 % 25,5 %

18,3 % −8,3 % −8,3 %

0,0 % 0,0 % 0,0 %

0,0 % 0,0 % 0,0 %

−1,6 % −1,6 % 4,7 %




“When is a story ready for implementation?”

When is a story ready for implementation?

Developer Group Project Manager Group

Development Manager Group

Domain

Business ExecIT ExecProduct OwnerProject ManagerPolicy UnitTeamIndividualScrum MasterEnterprise ArchitectFunc. Manager

Simple Simple Complicated

−2,5 % −2,5 % 2,5 %−2,5 % −2,5 % −2,5 %−12,5 % −7,5 % 17,5 %−25,0 % 30,0 % −10,0 %−2,5 % −2,5 % −2,5 %

16,3 % −3,8 % 1,3 %

6,3 % −3,8 % 1,3 %

18,8 % −6,3 % −6,3 %3,8 % −1,3 % −1,3 %0,0 % 0,0 % 0,0 %

Source: “Agile North”, Graham Oakes, 2012



What can we learn?Different groups have

different opinions on governance

Many weak opinions:confusion and opportunism

Many strong opinions:internal politics



What can we learn?Missing governance structure means

inventing a new structure for each decision

You may ignore governance,but governance won’t ignore you



What can we do?Carry out the workshops

Enforce roles around product management

Write a team charter
