Interview with Ivonne Scherfenberg

Thomas: Hi, Yvonne. Great that you're here.

Ivonne: Thanks for inviting me.

Thomas: Yeah.

Thomas: You told me a little bit about a new agile methodology that you're using.

Thomas: Maybe you can start and tell me a little bit about your background and your

Thomas: current precision and how you're using or in which context you're using these methodologies.

Ivonne: Yeah, sure. So, yeah, my name is Yvonne. I'm a

Ivonne: computer scientist so I studied at the HPI

Ivonne: did my PhD also there and then

Ivonne: I started working in a grown up

Ivonne: startup so we are around 100 people

Ivonne: a small software development company and what I'm doing there is not IT development

Ivonne: but rather product management so I'm basically the one who defines with the

Ivonne: stakeholders with the customers what shall be developed and then put it into

Ivonne: tickets for the developers and,

Ivonne: discuss with them how to implement it and yeah then it goes its way.

Thomas: Okay so as I already mentioned your team recently switched from Scrum,

Thomas: that's what you've been using before, to another Agile development process and

Thomas: can you give us a little background information why you did that?

Ivonne: Yeah sure Yeah, as you said, we were using Scrum,

Ivonne: successfully but not like it was not

Ivonne: perfect but for back then it was okay so we

Ivonne: could we could really work with this but then

Ivonne: what happened was we actually developed the software

Ivonne: for a big company and it went live in in

Ivonne: january and at this point we

Ivonne: got a lot of yeah defects bugs

Ivonne: reported from the production system and this

Ivonne: is something we had before as well and we also have like

Ivonne: an incident process where we say okay that if it's like a really

Ivonne: high priority issue then of course people jump to it directly but

Ivonne: in this case are there were lots of bugs which

Ivonne: are not super urgent but the customer was like oh this

Ivonne: needs to be fixed uh straight away and then if

Ivonne: you have a process like scrum and we had like a cycle of two weeks

Ivonne: uh so this means you start basically into the

Ivonne: sprint for two weeks and then this scope is.

Ivonne: Fixed right so there should be no disturbance in these two

Ivonne: weeks and if the bug comes in right in the beginning of

Ivonne: the two weeks then what you can tell the customer is oh yeah

Ivonne: we will take it in the up in the next sprint but this

Ivonne: is two weeks plus another two weeks until this is delivered

Ivonne: like this is the longest longest period that you can have

Ivonne: in the worst case right and yeah and what

Ivonne: happened was the customer said no no

Ivonne: no no this is something you have to have fixed straight

Ivonne: away you have to pick it up there yeah now

Ivonne: basically and yeah I

Ivonne: mean what you do is then you say okay we take

Ivonne: it and this was frustrating for the

Ivonne: developers so they had to switch contexts they did not know what to work on

Ivonne: in the in the next days and this was a moment where I said okay this does not

Ivonne: work anymore so scrum just does not work and then we actually switched to can

Ivonne: run it's like an option right where we said okay at least we'll be planned day by day.

Ivonne: This was working out better but still we

Ivonne: had besides these production issues we also had to

Ivonne: develop new features and when you develop new features then this

Ivonne: is like a longer process right and then we

Ivonne: had developers working on the features and then these bugs

Ivonne: coming in and then again it was like okay you have

Ivonne: to park the feature for now first work on this bug.

Ivonne: And then get back to the feature and then work and these

Ivonne: context switches slowed us down a lot in the development so in

Ivonne: the end we ended up in a in a um

Ivonne: yeah in a process that in a new process

Ivonne: which is um yeah yeah we call

Ivonne: it launchpad and missions so um

Ivonne: this is something um where we say

Ivonne: okay we we divide basically this this bug

Ivonne: or a small working thing from the

Ivonne: from the big topics so all the features are

Ivonne: now part of a mission so it's

Ivonne: like you want to develop the product and there's

Ivonne: like one big thing that you want to add to it so if this

Ivonne: is the case then we just started as a mission and then we you

Ivonne: can basically imagine it's like one big team.

Ivonne: So one yeah all developers all product owners

Ivonne: they are all in like one big pool one big team

Ivonne: this is called the launchpad and from there everything starts and

Ivonne: now you have the topics that you want to focus

Ivonne: on and which are big enough to say um yeah you

Ivonne: need to work on them for at least six weeks um and

Ivonne: then you say okay i want to start a mission on this uh you

Ivonne: prepare the mission so one product owner prepares the mission

Ivonne: uh gets input from the developers okay

Ivonne: how can this be done um what would

Ivonne: be a good solution here and then once you know okay what

Ivonne: to do then you start submission and then you go

Ivonne: into like a team with the product owner with the

Ivonne: android developers ios developers qa of course so whatever you need and yeah

Ivonne: and then you just start as a mission team with your own process and in this

Ivonne: case it can again become one or scrum so it depends on the mission team what

Ivonne: they prefer and yeah this worked out quite well so so.

Thomas: Basically it's sort of like a I don't know a wrapper around other processes

Thomas: could you describe it like

Ivonne: Yeah yeah that describes it quite well right so yeah and.

Thomas: Do you know so when those

Thomas: mission teams decide which other process to use within their mission so is that

Thomas: Is it more often Scrum or is it more often Kanban or what is the more popular

Thomas: process within your teams for those missions then?

Ivonne: We are most often using Kanban at the moment.

Ivonne: But actually, I think Scrum would work out as well, because you really have

Ivonne: the task, you know what to do, and you can estimate it, and then you can just plan sprints.

Ivonne: But I think this is just because people were used to Kanwar,

Ivonne: because we had Kanwar before, so now we continued on Kanwar,

Ivonne: which is also working fine. So, yeah.

Thomas: We made pretty similar experiences in the last job where I was working,

Thomas: when we a couple of times switch processes and

Thomas: to my experience

Thomas: if a team or that the whole team is too small then scrum provides a lot of overhead

Thomas: in in terms of meetings and so at some point i had the feeling we don't do anything

Thomas: anymore we just have like sprint meetings sprint reviews sprint retros

Thomas: dailies and whatever so if you have a large team then of course you need to

Thomas: communicate a lot but If teams are getting smaller and smaller,

Thomas: then you end up having tons of meetings and nobody is working anymore.

Ivonne: Yeah, true. I mean, estimation takes a lot of time, right? And this is basically

Ivonne: the basis for a good Scrum sprint.

Ivonne: And then, of course, you have to check, okay, what was the velocity?

Ivonne: What can we pick up in the next sprint?

Ivonne: Yeah, so this is something we don't do at the moment. And I think everybody is happy with this.

Ivonne: So it puts a bit more effort on the product owner because he really has to practice

Ivonne: every day so but again like with a with a mission if topics don't change every

Ivonne: day then this is also easy i mean you know like what to develop next and you

Ivonne: just put it in the backlog and then people can just pick the task from there and.

Thomas: Did you meet any particular obstacles during the the actual switch of the processes

Thomas: maybe also when you switch from scrum to kanban or now from kanban to this new

Thomas: launch pattern mission?

Ivonne: It went pretty smooth. Of course, in the beginning, it was, yeah,

Ivonne: I mean, the typical things, okay, like where do I need to go?

Ivonne: Which meeting is the one I have to attend the next day? So more like these organizational things.

Ivonne: But yeah, once like introduced and once everyone was aware, okay,

Ivonne: I need to go to join this daily, then it went really smooth.

Ivonne: I mean, as you said, it's nothing really new. it's

Ivonne: just a wrapper around like processes

Ivonne: which are known so yeah the only thing which is a bit of a disadvantage is that

Ivonne: yeah you have like teams which live together for a shorter period and then you

Ivonne: spend less time on really like,

Ivonne: how to say like onboarding and getting to know people like it's more like a

Ivonne: machinery i would say and before we had like these teams and we were working together for years,

Ivonne: um and now it's it also happens and i

Ivonne: mean this is also a good thing of the of the of the mission that if you need

Ivonne: more resources there's always this pool of the launch pad and you can say okay

Ivonne: uh i mean this should not happen too often but it's possible that you just get

Ivonne: someone new from launchpad and this one would just join the mission and do the things.

Ivonne: There's no real process where you introduce everyone or you onboard everyone.

Ivonne: It's really like all these things, I feel they are a bit shorter than if you

Ivonne: really have a long-term team and someone joins, then there's more this team spirit.

Thomas: Okay, but then on the other hand, you're basically involved into everything

Thomas: if you're working on this or that or this mission so you have also a better

Thomas: maybe a better overview on the on the total

Ivonne: Yes yes for sure this is definitely an advantage so all the developers,

Ivonne: they work on all the topics right and of course you you

Ivonne: try to make sure when you start mission that you have

Ivonne: people in the mission which already worked on the topic and you

Ivonne: mix them with people who are completely new to this

Ivonne: topic but in the end yeah you share knowledge right and this is something

Ivonne: which was definitely a disadvantage

Ivonne: before that you had experts on topics and if

Ivonne: these people leave then nobody knows anymore how

Ivonne: the code was written why it was written in this way so yeah definitely this

Ivonne: is an advantage and also um it's interesting to work with different people also

Ivonne: right so you get to know different uh yeah characters and this is something

Ivonne: i enjoy a So working with the different people.

Thomas: So how long would you say did it take you to get this new process into the living

Thomas: procedure and what you're really doing in a day-by-day basis?

Ivonne: More than two weeks, I would say. So really, it was really fast. So, yeah.

Thomas: I remember when we switched from basically just no process to Scrum,

Thomas: It took ages and you say like trainings and until everybody really understood

Thomas: Scrum because there's so many,

Thomas: I mean, there's so many wrong interpretations of Scrum and to do it right.

Thomas: And I mean, the scrum trainer who trained us as the whole team basically said,

Thomas: well, yeah, what he hears very often is that,

Thomas: people do something like Scrum and he actually said there is nothing that is like Scrum.

Thomas: Either you do Scrum or you don't do Scrum and if you're doing something like Scrum, then it's pretty

Thomas: probable that it will somehow fail because you're not kind of like sticking

Thomas: to this very well-defined process.

Ivonne: Yeah, I think Scrum is really not easy.

Ivonne: I mean what you aim for is this predictable velocity right and that that's something

Ivonne: very useful for product owners and management even more that development tells

Ivonne: you okay it takes two weeks or it takes a month a month,

Ivonne: so but this is also like what how you say what

Ivonne: you say is like difficult right because this requires that

Ivonne: you have like good estimation that all

Ivonne: systems are working fine or that you calculate into the

Ivonne: whole process that something will not work out when you try to deploy to some

Ivonne: environment and yeah i think this is also yeah something we we faced so even

Ivonne: if we get to estimate the tickets quite well then there was for sure something

Ivonne: some environment not working or yeah so.

Thomas: When when you say estimation what what estimation process did you use did you

Thomas: do estimation poker did you

Ivonne: Yeah yeah so we we have the estimation poker with the story points from one

Ivonne: to i don't know Usually not higher than 8.

Ivonne: So if something is 8, we already try to split it.

Ivonne: If it's not possible to split, then 8 points is something which can go into

Ivonne: a sprint, but everything which is higher, we need to split it up.

Thomas: And now maybe a very stupid question.

Thomas: What did you do with your scrum masters when you switched?

Ivonne: We did not have a scrum master this time anymore.

Ivonne: The position was open and I'm not sure whether it's still open but I think no.

Ivonne: Yeah the one we had was great but unfortunately he left. But that was not because

Ivonne: of this process of change.

Thomas: Okay. So basically when you got the idea to switch from Scrum or from Kanban

Thomas: to this mission launchpad process,

Thomas: did that idea come from the team or did it come from the management or basically

Thomas: was it just based on the problems that you described?

Ivonne: Yeah, it came from the management, so clearly.

Ivonne: So they basically like driven from the project management, right?

Ivonne: They said we need to deliver, we need to have this fixed and so we had these

Ivonne: changing priorities and this was basically like a decision from our head of development,

Ivonne: together with the other people in the management to say okay we need to change

Ivonne: something and this is a way we could try out so we really said okay we just

Ivonne: want to try it out and if it doesn't work then we do something different but

Ivonne: yeah so far I can say it works for us you know yeah.

Thomas: If you would have to make the same decision again, I mean, you basically just

Thomas: said it works fine, but would you think it was the right choice?

Thomas: By now maybe you've relearned about other processes that also would be working fine.

Thomas: So what do you think? Would you do the same again, given the same circumstances?

Ivonne: Yes, I would do the same again. So for our situation, It worked out perfectly.

Ivonne: I was also surprised that the developers took it quite good to be in the launchpad

Ivonne: because I felt, okay, if you're on the launchpad, it's like,

Ivonne: okay, you have to take care of all the other things which are coming up,

Ivonne: but you're not working on the features and they're always sort of working on the features.

Ivonne: It's another thing that developers want, but no, they are also developers which

Ivonne: are very happy on the launchpad.

Ivonne: There are developers which really like to switch from time to time,

Ivonne: right? and yeah so I so what I can see right now is that it works out well.

Thomas: So yeah maybe as

Thomas: a just sort of a background information which technologies are you working with

Thomas: so programming languages and is it most you mentioned Android is it mostly mobile

Thomas: solutions or do you think it works no matter what what the

Thomas: for example programming language is or do you think it's a solution which works

Thomas: particularly well for your context?

Ivonne: I mean we have yes I said we have Android iOS and backend so we have the most

Ivonne: complex situation that you can have right I think it works for everything so

Ivonne: yeah it doesn't matter which technology you use. For sure.

Thomas: Okay. Thanks a lot. Is there anything you want to add which I didn't ask?

Ivonne: Spontaneously there's nothing on my head which has not been said. So yeah.

Ivonne: Thanks for the opportunity to tell you what this and thank you very much.

Thomas: Thanks for telling us and And thanks for being here and hope to see you soon

Thomas: again in a similar situation. Sure.