Focus, Impact, Action

Stages:

Outputs/Decisions:

  • Business Goals and Requirements
  • User Story Backlog
  • High level Technical Design
  • High Level Delivery Plan

Methodologies:

  • Design Sprint
  • Open Space Workshop
  • Value Stream Mapping
  • Working Backward by Amazon

Total duration: 3 to 5 days

Stage 1 – Project Vision

In order to understand what to focus on, we want to see how the planned functionalities are connected to the overall experience. 

Work backwards from the “dream” to MVP.

Duration: 1 to 2 days

Output/decision: Business Goals and Requirements 

Business case

  • Who are the users and what are their needs?
  • What is the context and use cases?
  • What is the whole picture of the product?
  • What is the thinking behind the process where you cut the grand goal into MVP?

Requirements

  • What do we want to achieve in the next project cycle (MVP)?
  • What are the functioning goals for MVP?
  • What are the specific requirements?

Stage 2 – End-User Perspective

In order to be able to plan, we capture the User Stories that describe the functionalities we want to build. 

We use the business requirements from stage 1, challenge it, and derive Stories from the end-user perspective.

Duration: 0.5 to 1 day

Output/decision: User Story Backlog

Business requirements review

  • Clarify each item
  • Challenge each item
  • Agree on acceptance criteria and DoD
  • Agree on the final stack of requirements

User Stories 

  • Identify functionalities from the customer perspective. 
  • The format of the User Story is: “As a <role>, I need <functionality>, so that <result or goal>.

Stage 3 – Sketching Solutions

In order to prepare our decisions, we create several potential solution paths. 

We look at the potential solutions and analyze them, ultimately choosing the solution which we will plan for.

Duration: 0.5 to 1 day

Output/decision: High level Technical Design

Solutioning

  • Existing architecture presentation
  • Target architecture presentation
  • Discussion on uncertainties or counter-proposals 

Validation

  • Brainstorm alternatives to solutions
  • Create second alternative target architecture solution 
  • Choose best architecture/mix to finalize

Stage 4 – Project Planning

We create a plan based on the backlog to have a basis for our resource allocation and budgeting. 

The delivery team showcases the allocation and timeline to other stakeholders to gather feedback to verify the proposal.

Duration: 1 day

Output/decision: High level Delivery Plan

Backlog hierarchization 

  • Prioritize the user stories
  • Create dependency map
  • Mark the complexity for each story (T-shirt sizes or Fibonacci sequence. No time estimates!)
  • Share and incorporate the timeline expectation
  • Agree on roles and responsibilities
  • Agree on the ways of working
  • Draft Sprints layout
  • Map out the potential timeline

Let’s get in touch!

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