South Africa Scrum Gathering 2010

Peter Beck and I contemplated about a suitable session for the Scrum Gathering in South Africa. When we came to our mutual experiences, we found a lot about release planning and management for Web applications we would like to share and discuss. Since product development for Web applications is a particular topic, and its implications differ from business automation or COTS products, we wanted to dedicate this deep dive session to our special domain of interest.

Most Web development undertakings are project driven. A vast number of product and project managers determine various aspects of a portal, gaming or news site. Organization and integration are left to the IT department. Web developments for clients requires particular attention to change. We would daresay that development for the Web is a natural realm of agility, yet it is prone to chaos and confusion as well.

We have encountered:

• Disorganized product management organizations with no clear distinction of responsibilities
• Project centered development with no actual product view of the whole site
• Component teams with no or low-bandwitdh communication between each other
• Three struggling tribes: business, development and operations
• Flexibility mistaken for agility, technical debt and death by maintenance developments
• Extremely short Sprint lengths with incomplete output

Sometimes, we have been able to resolve those issues with our clients, sometimes not. This deep dive workshop deals with the various release planning and management aspects of getting Web services and products confidently out of the door, including but not limited to:

• Basics: Release planning with story point estimates, priority categories and frequent changes
• Good to know: Initial release plan involving acceptance / staging / operations / shipment activities
• Experience: Release planning for different versions and variations of a product
• The "release story": How teams can manage roll out activities
• The "integration story": How teams can deal with external deliveries

Whether you are working for a portal provider or creating Web solutions for external customers, you are welcome to attend our Scrum Gathering deep dive session!

Peter and Andreas