Optimal Length of Agile Sprints

Agile is a popular development methodology sometimes it seems to be the only method in use today.

At the core of Agile is to break work down into small chunks that can be managed by the scrum team in a short period of time known as the sprint.  Ideally the sprint delivers some or several useful functions that can be shown (demo) to stakeholders and ideally to customers in order to gain feedback and to change and improve as quickly as possible. This objective is often to deliver MVP or Minimal Viable Product although this is in our experience often beyond the realistic scope of a single sprint.

The idea is that the team commits to a given quanta of work that can be experienced by the customer and get quick feedback. It also allows flexibility to change direction or priorities of the overall development.

In our organisation one of the big questions is the ideal length of the sprints.  

To set the context most of our development does not get released to customers on a one or two sprint basis. We use sprints as a meaningful checkpoint and as a way of involving other teams, stakeholders, sponsors and management.

Previously we used three week sprints and in this specific business unit the custom has been sprints of two weeks.  We are now in the process of moving to three weeks; partially at my initiative.

The reasoning is that two week sprints are valuable when the output does get delivered to users and especially if it is user interface rich. Fast work and rapid feedback and intense market dynamics seem to fit in this context.

However for work that develops over time especially with a lot of infrastructure or core development then there are many disadvantages to short sprints.

Agile sprints have high overheads in each and every stage of  preparation, execution and post sprint analysis (Discovery, Pre-planning, Planning, Retrospectives etc.) There is also management overhead in driving an organisation with several projects each with short sprints and low capacity. Overall these overheads that amount to high costs that the organisation can not afford over time. Longer sprints have lower overhead and so are more efficient. Our analysis indicates that moving from two to three work sprints cuts most of the overhead linearly.

Shorter sprints present a challenge in trying to deliver real value (MVP or MVP-like) even more so if the team is quite small. It is perceived that the small capacity presents its own challenges in preparing and planning the sprint trying to customise the business needs to the limited time.

Another critical issue is the vulnerability to planned and unplanned absences. It only takes a couple of days vacation, course or sickness to wipe out the content of a sprint. Bugs, tricky integrations and environment issues have a similar disastrous impact.

Finally, short sprint cycles place a large demand on the Product Manager and his team. The cycle times are so short that there is never any time to pause and consider the bigger picture and to research new ideas and future directions. Again we think that there are almost linear savings available by increasing the sprint length.

Overall short sprints are considered expensive, hard to plan and prone to delay. Our analysis indicates that three  week sprints are a better balance of flexibility (Agility) and efficiency.

Working from Home - Why Yahoo and all the old fashioned companies got it so wrong!

There has been a lot of news and comment recently about Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's new policy of requiring all its workers to work from the office. People have commented that perhaps this is a way of "right-sizing"  the company. Apparently many of the workers are pretty much permanently working from home.

It is a subject close to my heart - I used to work at an organisation that was very much mission orientated - even junior managers applied large amounts of discretion when people needed to work from home. Indeed it was frequently a management tool - a solid day at home can accomplish quantities of work that take weeks in the office - for example in preparing a design document, strategy or any other thought intensive task that is frequently disturbed at work!

Talking to friends it seems sadly that many organisations are becoming more draconian in their outlook.

I do agree with the statements made by Yahoo that meeting colleagues known and unknown is a fruitful process that generates cooperation and ideas. But, let's be honest it also generates useless conversation about last night's sport, next weekend's plans or the state of snow on the ski slope. Clearly, these are important human interactions that make life and work more pleasant - but, they can be missed occasionally in the interests of concentrated work.

I also think that managers need to cleverly manage their workers wherever they are located to get the best return on their investment - this is probably "easier" in the perception of many weak managers if the worker is chained in their cubicle.

However, I am a firm believer in the value of working from home.

First and foremost, our workers are the key differentiator that we put into our products. In return for asking them for the extra commitment to make a real difference; this means being sensitive to their needs. If I need them to put in extra time to simply make it happen, then I should allow them to do so from home (assuming no security concerns and practical issues.) In addition, if the same worker needs to spend time at home a few days later with their kids, getting the washing machine fixed, or just to avoid rush hour commuting then I need to offer (within reason) the same flexibility that I asked of them when it was convenient for me. My employees will only go the extra mile if I understand that there is a two way process - or if I pay them so much that.... but this is not going to happen! (In fact it is almost impossible - we always want more.)

I need to trust my workers - their potential to do damage with poor product design, a mistake in front of t he customer is well above their hourly or even annual wage. I need to train, encourage and trust them as their manager - so if I trust them with a few millions of sales or company assets I can probably trust them not to fiddle a few hours of timesheets. Guess what - if they under perform then I need to correct and perhaps eventually fire them - independent of where they work. I need to give them clear productivity targets and KPIs and the tools and the guidance to achieve on time and with high quality.

As their manager I need to develop a greater skill set if they are not down the corridor, that is a challenge not a threat - I will be a better manager in a whole variety of ways and circumstances. In fact I need to show then my leadership and not my weakness.

We live in the twenty first century! This has many impacts. It wouldn't do any harm at all if companies reduced their carbon footprint by saving commuter travels. By the way it saves them quite a lot - if this is a company car then there is a direct saving in fuel and clever use of corporate space also cuts down on rentals, heat light etc. This can be serious money.

There are other elements of the 21st century that impact the debate. There are endless amounts of technology and products designed just to make it possible to work in teams even remotely. I know this, because all companies I have ever worked for expect us to use these technologies when we are traveling for business. Late at night, jet lagged and exhausted we try and keep up with the "day job" just so we don't get too behind and stop other projects because we are not around. On the other hand, sadly in the 21st century there are plenty of distractions in the office. Poor workers will waste their time and those of their fellow workers only too easily. Our job is always to challenge them to do better.

Working from home removes workspace distractions - no sport, no accidental team sessions by the water cooler, no pointless meetings where nobody is very clear why we are meeting and what we plan to achieve (apart from discussing current events). Most importantly it provides the space in time and place to really get some concentrated work done and hit my targets.

So in short - working from home can have tremendous upside in terms of worker respect and work achieved. It can also save the company substantial expenses and increase employee happiness. Sure it can be abused and sure their are distractions at home - but we need to judge each person by their results and not by corporate dogma. As managers we need to recognise that like most things there are pros and cons and that there are different people out there with their own needs and their own contribution - we need to work with our teams to make sure that we get the most from our policy; it isn't right for every person in every job function every day - but it works for many people in many situations.

We need to embrace working from home for our good, the company good and for the good of our fellow workers.

LTE Overview

I was recentlyinterviewed by my friend Eli Jacobs of JBSTek and we talked about the What? Why and When? of  LTE - Long Term Evolution.

I have turned my notes into a blog post - here is everything that you wanted to know about LTE..........

So What is LTE?

LTE or to give it its full name - Long Term Evolution is the dominant 4G mobile technology, driven primarily by growing demand for high-bandwidth data for mobile devices.

Why do we need LTE?

For many operators worldwide, revenue from their traditional offerings of voice and messaging are falling dramatically due to commoditization and substitution of alternative services. Mobile data, however, presents operators with an opportunity; driven mainly by video (37% of global mobile data revenue 2011[1]). Several operators worldwide already make more revenue per subscriber from data than from voice[2].

Apple invented the iPhone and the iPad and together with the Android based vendors they have  developed the markets for bandwidth hungry handheld devices. In 2011, almost half a billion smartphones[3] were sold worldwide – all of them data hungry. So both users and operators have a significant interest in mobile data.

Operators, have found that the technological & commercial challenges of providing mobile data are hard and very expensive. The network collapses that accompanied the launch of iPhones are well-known and caused considerable embarrassment to the operators. Essentially, operators need to provide many users with a high quality mobile connection simultaneously. This requires massive network investments and a paradigm shift in the underlying network technology. Of course, the consumer price is already very attractive and subject to continuing competition and price erosion, which means the operators need to be very efficient.

LTE is designed to be the technological solution to the challenge of economically providing fast and ubiquitous data to meet the demands of a highly mobile society equipped with a plethora of data on demand devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Network Technologies

Traditionally, network technologies have grouped into regional blocks – USA, Europe and Japan and most other regions adopting standards from one of these blocks. (The European standards do, however, have a considerable presence in the other regions.) This approach increased costs as each technology needs to be developed individually and then sold to a smaller market, and for the consumer it limits inter-operability. Therefore, one of the primary motivations of LTE was to create (for the first time) a universal global standard; and it would appear that this has largely succeeded (although there are different regional flavors.)

Operators today, have solutions for mobile data. The European standard has HSPA and HSPA+ that more naturally extends to LTE. The American and Japanese find themselves facing a technological discontinuity; as network equipment providers have stopped development of these standards in favor of focusing on LTE. This explains why much of the early adoption in LTE is taking place in these regions.

Contemporary networks handle voice and data very differently.  LTE adopts an all IP approach with the subscribers’ terminals and all the network elements supporting only IP.  The scope of the technological changes are outside the scope of this overview, but, suffice it to say that there are changes in the devices in your pocket, in the antennae and in the core network. It is also important to note, that there are inter-working strategies to ensure that contemporary and LTE networks can co-exist.

What about Voice?

As we noted, the primary motivation for LTE is to improve the mobile data experience and voice services work well today. For the most part, therefore, operators are taking if it isn’t broken don’t fix it approach and are leaving voice alone, and focusing on improving the mobile data experience.

In the longer term, many argue that this approach doesn’t make sense and there is no reason why voice on the mobile should not be just another IP based service. In fact they argue that efficiency and economic considerations will require that voice is IP based (from the handset and throughout the network. Today, mobile carrier voice is not, generally, a data service from the handset.)  Proponents of this vision look to the Voice over LTE (VoLTE) standard which uses IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) as the voice solution. It is unclear, how quickly voice will be combined with LTE, meanwhile user devices will continue to support 2G/3G voice as well as 4G data (this is also required to support operation outside 4G network zones.)

Some LTE Facts

• Nominal performance  of 100Mbps download bandwidth (allowing you to download a 74min album in 54 seconds or a hour long DVD movie in under 5 minutes)[4] - how much do you have at home today?
• First LTE Networks launched in Norway & Sweden by TeliaSonera in December 2009

Latest LTE Numbers

• There are currently 49 Live Commercial LTE Networks in 29 countries[5]
• 226 Commercial Networks in 76 Countries are in planning or deployment stages[6]
• 3.6M LTE Worldwide Subscriptions to Q3/2011[7]
• 48 Smartphones support LTE out of a total of 269 devices to Jan 2012[8]
• Israel – only one operator is publically looking at LTE with no confirmed launch date
• Predicted 290M worldwide LTE subscriptions by 2015[9]

Afterword

LTE is a universal all IP standard that enables operators to meet our demands for ever more mobile data. The objective is to drive down the cost of delivering gigabytes of data (note gigabytes!!!) LTE requires both upgrades and considerable investment in user devices, and in the entire network. LTE currently, has a nominal download speed of 100Mbps, with LTE Advanced due in late 2013 supporting 1Gbps (nominal download). Verizon Wireless in the US has arguably the most universal deployment of the 49 currently live networks.

When comparing with the adoption rates of  other mobile technologies LTE is currently on track to be one of the fastest ever adopted mobile technologies.

---

[1] http://www.jsicapitaladvisors.com/the-ilec-advisor/tag/lte-predictions after Nokia Siemens Network

[2] http://www.gsacom.com/downloads/charts/mobile_data_arpu.php4

[3] http://www.strategyanalytics.com/default.aspx?mod=pressreleaseviewer&a0=5170

[4] http://www.gsacom.com//downloads/charts/application_download_times.php4

[5] http://www.gsacom.com/news/gsa_344.php4

[6] http://www.gsacom.com/news/gsa_344.php4

[7] http://www.gsacom.com/downloads/pdf/gsa_lte_ecosystem_report_200112.php4

[8] http://www.gsacom.com/downloads/pdf/gsa_lte_ecosystem_report_200112.php4

[9] http://www.instat.com/press.asp?ID=3279&sku=IN1104914WH

Switching your customers ON not OFF

I have just read a fascinating piece that suggests that 74% of users are very satisfied with their Apple iPad but only 54% with the Amazon Kindle Fire.

The fact that the iPad is so popular isn't perhaps a huge surprise - after all that's what Apple does - creating brand recognition - making devoted consumers devoted to their devices with the ultimate user experience. Now the survey was not huge - around 200 tablet owning Americans, and I guess that the Kindle team have not quite made the leap from black and white e-readers to tablets (at least according to this study.)

The really interesting point was that many Kindle users expressed unhappiness with  the location of the on/off switch! At first thought that seems pretty trivial switch it on - use it - switch it off - there seem to be bigger issues with the user experience. However, on deeper analysis it reminds us how critical all aspects of user experience are in determining customer satisfaction. I am pretty sure that the Kindle team thought about all the buttons probably did some focus groups; but they still got it wrong for a sizeable number of respondents. Smaller companies would probably do a water cooler satisfaction study and then change the decision based on feedback (=resistance to changing the design) from the engineering team.

For software based products life is a bit easier - it is simpler to change the design of user interfaces and in some cases it makes sense to constantly offer slightly different versions and to constantly analyse performance and to tweak the product. See this great piece for a more in depth analysis.

Hardware or software, consumer or business product it is critical to get all aspects of the user experience exactly right; and as far as possible to constantly fine tune the product. At all times the focus must be customer centric. The product team needs to understand the customer segments, and to keep their understanding updated. Go to Market is a tough call balancing lots of conflicts and pressures and it's often hard to go the extra mile with RD and to meet the other constraints like time and budget.

User experience is critical; the survey didn't say how many users would not buy the product again because it had switched them off, but, given social media, peer reviews and recommendations - a poor user experience switches the competition on.

The Economic Value of Social Media

Regular readers of the JET blog will be aware that we are great believers in the power of Social Media. We recommend that Product Managers and Marketers get involved in Social Media even (or especially) for industrial products and not just photos of you kids, kitten or favorite film. See for example Social Media Revolutions

A couple of items caught my eye this month - The Daily Telegraph reported that Facebook contributes over 1Bn GBP to the UK economy and supports over 18K jobs, in the EU the estimated contribution is almost 13Bn GBP. The major beneficiaries are in the small and medium business. The study was performed by Deloittes and I guess their estimates are far from being a precise science, however, it does give some indication of the staggering reach and contribution that social media is making to business.

In a similar article The Times ( link is members only content) discussed why businesses try so hard to get you to LIKE them. The estimate is that each Like costs $1.07 in marketing costs - apparently for no immediate reward. On the other hand  Facebook itself has 586M Likes and Coca Cola as the most liked product has around 36M Likes and needs to have its own internal Facebook management team.

Some marketeers regard a Like as the ultimate word of mouth - influencer recommendation.

Facebook claims research showing that customers who Like also spend more. The machinations of  Facebook (and perhaps impending IPO) are out of scope of this article, but it does show how seriously some of the largest and most successful brands regard Facebook & we haven't even got started on Twitter, Google+, professional social networksand all the rest.....

Your product may not be consumer orientated and it may not be as bubbly as Coke, but, it still needs a home in social networks as way of getting the attention of your customers and influencers.