Running a Project with Less Pain and More Awesome
Mac Newbold - UPHPU - April 21, 2016
Setting Expectations
- I've been involved in a lot of projects
- Widely varying degrees of pain and success
- Some situations/behaviors correlate highly with pain
- Others correlate highly with awesome
- These are my thoughts/ramblings on what I want to try to do on my next project
- YMMV
Road Map
- Getting Started
- Planning
- UX / Design
- Building
- Testing
- Launching
Getting Started
Define the Problem
Many projects are doomed from the start, because they don't understand the problem they're trying to solve.
Pain Point:
Work on Solutions Too Soon
Identify the Right Group of Stakeholders
Projects that don't get the right people in the room often die a slow and very painful death, finding out at the end that they messed up at the beginning.
Who is part of the team?
- Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
- "Stakeholders"
- Product Owner (PO)
- Project Manager / Product Manager (PM)
- Architects
- Devs
- QA
- It's usually easier to be overly broad at this point than try to make up for it later...
Communicate We Must
Planning
Take the Time to Plan Right!
Pain Point: Starting Dev Before Planning is Done
"Iterative Deepening"
-
Problem
-
Requirements
-
Documentation
-
Wireframes
-
Graphic Design
-
Services APIs
Dream Big
Then Identify MVP/Phase 1
Pain Point: Unrealistic Timeline
UX / Design
Minimal Inputs
Think about the bare minimum you can ask your users to do. There are often some elegant shortcuts.
Minimal Inputs,
Valuable Outputs
- Don't ask much of them
- Give them a lot of value in return
- Don't give them clutter
- Weigh value added vs. complexity
Pain Point: Scope Creep
Building
Avoid Distractions
Stay on Target
Pain Point: Plan Was Wrong
Testing
Unit Testing
Feature Testing
Integration Testing
User Acceptance (UAT)
Pain Point: Rework & Fixing
Launching
Take it slow...
- "Dog Food"
- Alpha Release
- Beta Release
- Gradual Rollout
Pain Point: Production Issues
Conclusions
Takeaways
- Return on your planning investment: >= 10x
- Communication and Teamwork: Critical
- Getting the plan right: Over 9000
- Sticking to the Plan: Harder than it looks
- Failure in Testing/Launch can ruin you
Q&A
Thanks for coming!
Feedback welcome:
mac@macnewbold.com
deck
By Mac Newbold
