Design Thinking in Action: Release and Sprint Planning

Only briefly mentioned in Hour 13, Release Planning is the process of identifying, prioritizing, and selecting the high-level capabilities and user stories (needs) to be reflected in our solution, built over a period of time, and delivered at the conclusion of that time in the form of a time-boxed “release.” We tend to think about releases as spanning months rather than weeks. Given that Agile sprint planning and grooming are well adopted and considered standard operating procedure by the Project Management Institute (PMI), we have not covered them in any depth here other than using techniques to make sprints and releases visible and visual.

To actually organize, prioritize, and consider the dependencies between items, we divide each large release-level time box into multiple smaller time boxes called sprints. Each sprint within a release is typically executed sequentially and reflects the work necessary to configure or develop the code necessary to deliver the planned set of capabilities and user stories. Sprints are typically one to four weeks long. For context around this hierarchy of releases and sprints, see Figure 18.1.

Thinking about and planning for the specific sprints and larger releases associated with our solution helps us create a plan and see the big picture. Doing so doesn’t naturally help us increase velocity, however. But with the big picture clear and our schedule aligned, we can then think ahead and think more deeply about the next best step that can help us achieve greater velocity.

• What is our three Horizon Plan (as we covered in Hour 13), and how well does our Release Plan and its underlying sprints align with these horizons? Is there room to deliver early? Are there opportunities to run certain sprints or other work in parallel? Might we actually run two or more releases in parallel?

• Can we better identify and assess the value and impact of the benefits we expect to achieve? How well are we tracking against our planned benefits realization? Are we overstepping what we learned about Good Enough Thinking, or do we have an opportunity to apply another guardrail for thinking to increase velocity as we covered in Hour 11?

• How might we improve sprint grooming and planning to deliver more predictably? Why are we underdelivering, for example, and how can we apply the Five Whys, Problem Framing, Problem Tree Analysis, or Problem Stating outlined in Hour 9 to improve our velocity?

• Are we monitoring the delivery of our outputs well? Where might we move faster and deliver more? Do we need to better instrument how we operate so as to highlight how our expected benefits and other outcomes are slow to be realized? Do we really understand how all of this work contributes to the bigger picture or our Horizon Plan?

• How might we better analyze the potential impact of planned changes on our expected benefits and outcomes? Is there an opportunity to engage our users again and reimagine a set of sprints, for example?

• How well are our expected benefits aligned against our goals, objectives, and key results. What’s missing or misaligned?

We need to consider also how we might optimize our processes and personas as we consider responsibility and accountability surrounding benefits realization. As we will cover in later hours, the better we understand how well we are delivering value and our expected benefits today, the better we can ensure in the future that those expected benefits can be sustained.

Design Thinking in Action: Operating Small to Deliver Big

As most people understand, it is more important to focus on outcomes rather than outputs. Being busy doesn’t equate to delivering value. When it comes to sprints and our other work in flight, we need to remember to establish those sprints and time boxes in ways that contain a body of work that can actually be completed within the sprint. The idea is to deliver something of use, something that can be tested, something of value (keeping in mind that sometimes value will require more than one sprint, of course). It is through the small pieces of work we deliver that big changes and impact are delivered. Consider the following:

• Size user stories using story points, T-shirt sizing, or similar approximation approaches to estimate the time and effort or development capacity necessary to create a feature or process. User Story Sizing is key to creating better sprints, releases, and schedules.

• Employ User Story Mapping to bring together the steps necessary to deliver a user story, from identifying goals and user journey to solutioning, organizing work into time boxes or sprints, and publishing a release plan.

• Focus on understanding and delivering key dependencies and core underpinnings first. To be sure, we will need to explain the value of delivering these items, but the explanation should reflect the fact that future impact depends on this first bit of work.

• Focus next on delivering the right features at the right time (rather than delivering a collection of features that may or may not actually be useful in the short term).

• In parallel, use techniques such as POCs and MVPs outlined in Hour 17 as a way to deliver fast while obtaining the feedback necessary to deliver well in a directionally accurate kind of way.

• Organize the remaining work to accommodate dependencies on other work, especially work external to the bit that we’re focused on.

• When we need to divide large bodies of work across multiple sprints (because one discrete component builds on another), work in parallel on landing the reasoning as well as highlighting and demonstrating the value in these discrete components.

• Conversely, organize work in parallel when such work can be accommodated within the same sprint and we have onboarded the necessary resources (and resource bandwidth) to accommodate running in parallel.

In these ways, we should be able to demonstrate value early and demonstrate it throughout each sprint and across each release.

Design Thinking in Action: Smart IP Reuse

Our world is filled with accelerators in various shapes and sizes that can help us start faster or move with greater velocity. Though overused in the tech realm, the term intellectual property (IP) represents a broad source of accelerators. For our purposes, IP is the work that others have completed before us that may be reused (or adapted and reused) to help us make better progress today. Consider the following list and illustration depicted in Figure 18.2:

• Document deliverables. How might we reuse functional and solution design documents, technical blueprints, and the like as a form of template for more quickly creating our own documents?

• Planning deliverables. How might we adapt previously used Release and Sprint Planning documents, Horizon Plans, roadmaps, and project plans for our benefit?

• Checklists. How might we leverage existing checklists to help ensure we don’t miss something important as we design, develop, deploy, and operate our solutions?

• Test plans. How might we adapt a well-designed test plan to accelerate our understanding and preparation for testing?

• Preconfigured templates. How might some of our work already be reflected in the previous work of others such that we can lift and reuse them as a literal or figurative template to accelerate our own work?

• Design Thinking templates. In the same way we might adopt solution-oriented IP, how might we borrow the templates, worked examples, tools, and other artifacts used in our Design Thinking exercises to accelerate how we prepare and deliver those exercises?

The idea is simple enough. Avoid the temptation to create what doesn’t need to be created. Save our time and energy for thinking through and creating what hasn’t been done before. Adapt and reuse what we can to help us make progress faster than otherwise possible.

Design Thinking in Action: Smart Multitasking

The notion of multitasking or performing two or more tasks simultaneously is nothing new. The idea was popularized in the 1960s by IBM’s computer engineers, but most of us have since come to realize that multitasking is not nearly as effective in increasing productivity or saving time as we once believed. True multitasking is more of a conundrum, in fact; instead of getting twice as much done, multitasking often leaves us with less than half of either task completed. Why? Because the task switching that our brain does as we move from one task to the other and back again creates too much of a burden. Getting ourselves back into the context of the new task takes too long, wasting time as we retread old ground to pick up again where we left off.

Of course, the reality for all of us is this: We need to multitask in some capacity because we simply don’t have a choice. We still have a hundred things to get done each day and something like 16 hours to get it all done. Thus, we have to find a way to get things done and fight the inertia that pulls us toward stalling in between tasks. We need to avoid overload and strike a sustainable balance. How? Consider these questions:

• How might we reduce the number of tasks on our plates? That is, how might we say no or delegate tasks to others, so that 100 tasks become 80?

• How might we use Forcing Functions, Time Boxing, and other techniques to help us focus and prioritize our multitasking?

• How might we automate some of these tasks so that we spend a bit of time monitoring and verifying tasks that have been completed rather than spending all of our time doing?

• How might we reduce or eliminate the distractions around us that shatter the glass house of cards we mentally build as we think about a task?

• How might we better give our full attention to what’s in front of us so that we actually complete our tasks faster than typically done?

The two greatest techniques for smarter multitasking include

• Do what gives us the most energy at the time; follow our passion.

• Make sure we make time for the most important big rocks; if the big and important tasks aren’t accounted for first, it’s oftentimes impossible to add them in later.

These are simple techniques, but they are powerful. Do the thing that gives us the most energy at the time, and then move on to the next thing that gives us the most energy. And make progress on the big rocks (the most important items) lest we run out of room or bandwidth or energy to get these done at all. Use Time Box and use Forcing Functions as necessary to help us complete the mandatory work that doesn’t give us energy. And for lasting change, consider how personal productivity apps and coaching such as that available from BillionMinds can help us discover and embed the specific mindset and techniques that personally work best for us and for our situations (see https://billionminds.com).

To this last point, when we focus on the tasks that give us the most energy:

• We get things done, and generally get them done quickly.

• We naturally create more bandwidth for other tasks.

• We get the endorphin rush that comes from checking off an item on our to-do list, which in turn gives us energy to tackle the next task.

• Our brain gets primed to tackle a similar task with relative ease, giving us more bandwidth for such tasks.

When we follow our energy and our passion, we get more done. And when we thoughtfully inject Forcing Functions and similar Design Thinking techniques into our less-than-energizing tasks, we might get the rest of our work done. For those most elusive tasks, we might even consider Gamification, too, covered next.

Design Thinking in Action: Gamification for Engagement

We might try our hand at Smart Multitasking or Time Boxing to get work completed, and we might even use a Forcing Function to help us make progress when tasks simply need to be completed. But what if we are still having trouble finding the self-discipline to just get a set of tasks done? What else might we try?

Consider how Gamification can be used to drive progress and check off tasks. Gamification, a term coined in 2002 by Nick Pelling, a computer programmer and inventor, helps us by increasing our engagement and our motivation (Wood & Reiners, 2015). To help us engage in the work ahead of us and finish the necessary but mundane work we dread, consider making a game out of those tasks by building a reward system around them.

Video game manufacturers have long used the notion of ribbons and badges and other such accolades as a way to incentivize people to spend time playing their games. Car manufacturers have more recently done the same, using green economy leaf visuals when we drive economically as a way to reward us (and improve our perception of the vehicle’s mileage). Training vendors and new-language apps use Gamification to reward students with new features, awards, certificates, levels, and more to those who complete a training section or make progress in a program or curriculum.

In the same way, apply Gamification to the low-passion and low-energy tasks awaiting us. Instead of solely earning video game badges or points or new levels, though, reward ourselves and our team with little but meaningful trinkets or prizes. Gift cards, coffee breaks, half-day Fridays, free lunches, and so on can serve as grand prizes too, for those who mightily achieve.

Design Thinking in Action: Shortcuts and Wormholes

Sometimes the fastest path between two points is not a straight line. Also called Shortcut Thinking or Finding the Wormhole, this technique is about finding not-so-obvious shortcuts between where we are today and where we need to go. The key lies in this: navigating everything between us and our destination without allowing ourselves to get caught up in the detours and side routes. The obvious paths aren’t necessarily the best paths for our specific situation, after all.

To find shortcuts, we need to know something about the map that describes where we are and where we want to go. We should lay out a traditional route for starters, if only to help us understand that route more deeply (in the same way that we might employ Journey Mapping, covered briefly in Hour 3 and in more detail in Hour 8).

Let’s consider the route that a student might follow to complete a traditional four-year college degree (see Figure 18.3). What if we don’t have the funds to pay as we go? Or we don’t want to invest in college loans? Is there a shorter path? There may be! Map the route to make it visible, and the makings of a shorter path may begin to become self-evident.

• Avoid the long breaks over the summer and in between semesters. The route should visually show us these breaks. Instead, attend school year-round and this single shortcut will allow us to complete a four-year degree in three years or less.

• Avoid the traditional four-year degree curriculum, which is usually something like 120 to 132 credit hours (or 40 to 44 courses). Instead, find a degree program that requires 110 credit hours or less, which will help us reduce the four-year time commitment a bit.

• Most universities award at least some college credit for life experience or for certificates we completed (such as that gained in military training, technology certification programs, and the like). Instead of assuming we must complete every course, work with the counselor to reduce the number of required courses, which will also help us reduce the four-year time commitment a bit more.

• Finally, most universities also extend college credit for earning minimum scores on Advanced Placement (AP) exams and College Level Examination Program (CLEP) tests. Study for and take some of these tests in parallel to avoid the courses that bring us no energy or passion, and we shave even more time off our regular four-year journey.

Again, the key may lie in changing the playing field so we can change the route. Thus, it’s important to really understand that playing field, or the lay of the land, and how we might change it. There are plenty of ways to complete a four-year degree in three years. Know our goal and know what we are willing to trade off to achieve that goal. Truth be told, there are typically many ways to get from Point A to Point B if we are more focused on the speed of the trip rather than the experience. So consider the trade-offs and map new routes. The shortcuts and wormholes are just waiting to be found.

Case Study

Consider the following case study and questions. You can find the answers to the questions related to this case study in Appendix A, “Case Study Quiz Answers.”

Quiz

1. What is the hierarchy of releases to sprints, and how do they map to one another?

2. What technique considers how the initiative leaders might adapt existing templates and artifacts to improve velocity?

3. In what cases does multitasking make sense and actually prove useful?

4. What technique might be employed to use ribbons, badges, and other rewards to encourage initiative testers to complete their test cases?

5. Which technique sets the stage for reinventing the playing field to find a faster or more effective route between two points?