Project Management Nightmares For Startups By Rahul Sudame

Project Management Nightmares for Startups

- By Rahul Sudame, CSM, PMP

Director of Engineering, Faichi Solutions

Agenda

• Startup Environments

• Challenges

• What worked

• What Didn’t work

• Our Learnings

Services Startups

• Small organizations providing services to globally distributed customers

• Projects through contacts

• Customer-driven processes (if at all!)

• Big customer’s dominance

• Funding / Growth challenges

I want to develop a social networking platform for focus

groups!

I want to develop a free video

conferencing portal!

I want to develop an app to record the proceedings of a

surgery!

I want to develop a portal for pet-owners!

Product Ideas

Product Startups

• One liner product ideas!

• Ever evolving thoughts.

• Will this idea fly?

• What about funding?

• Multiple vendors bidding in the proposal stage.

How much will it cost?

• What’s the scope?

• Which estimation techniques (FP, SP, UCP) to use?

• What is the confidence level is estimates?

• Which Project Management methodology (Agile/SDLC) will work here?

• Engagement model (Fix Price/T&M)?

When can we launch it?

• Functional Specification Document (FSD)? You are kidding!

• Product Backlog? What’s this?

• Change request? Its going to pivot daily!

• How to estimate efforts for ever-evolving scope?

• How to decide launch date with fluid scope?

Waterfall may not work here

Requirements Gathering

Design

Development

Testing

Launch & Maintain

Documentation, Signoffs, Handoff

Business Analyst Architect Developer Tester Tech Support

Lets try Agile!

VisibilityIterative Development

All-At-Once Development

Building Product Backlog

• Project Manager Playing role of PO/BA.

• Converting thoughts into user stories.

• Recording user stories in PM tool, along with customer prioritization.

• Wireframes / Prototypes instead of detailed specifications.

Product Owner

789101112

Usability / User Experience

Wireframes / Mockups

Iterations not ‘Sprints’

Iteration

Potentially

Shippable Product

PM / PO Demo

PM / ScrumMaster

The Team

789101112

No Changes(in Duration or Deliverable)

Commitment

Daily ScrumMeeting

Retrospective

Inspect & Adapt

1 week iteration.

Demo to customers every week.

Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.

Finalize next week’s plan based on customer’s business dynamics.

PM Challenges in Startups

• Lack of defined processes

• Constraints – Resources, Tools/Infrastructure, Budget, Timelines

• Changing business dynamics

• Uncertainties – Change in plans/focus, Resource sharing

• Pressure of sustenance and growth

QualityManagement

CostManagement

CommunicationManagement

TimeManagement

Human ResourceManagement

ProcurementManagement

RiskManagement

IntegrationManagement

ScopeManagement

Minimalistic Project Management

What didn’t work?

Agile Process Hype Cycle

Gartner Hype Cycle

• Significant changes in requirements, during/after development.

• Change in requirement might result in design change.

• Time to market vs. Change in scope.

• No formal Change Control mechanism.

• Impact to timelines.

Floating Requirements

Wireframes

• May not match actual customer expectations.

• Un-spelled expectations not captured.

• Implementation differing the wireframes.

• No formal Functional Specification Document.

• No defined / ‘Frozen’ scope.

Challenges

• Funding constraints.

• Funding or Business pressure resulting in change of directions.

• Trust and collaboration between both the organizations.

• Inflation of scope / Ineffective change management.

• Gaining end user adoption and early feedback.

What worked?

Agile Manifesto

Process and toolsIndividuals and

interactionsover

Following a planResponding to

changeover

Source: www.agilemanifesto.org

Comprehensive documentation

Working software over

Contract negotiation

Customer collaboration

Wireframes

• Wireframes / Mockups / HTML Prototypes in absence of detailed specs

• Helped in getting clarity on User Interface as well as functionality.

• Reference point for developers and testers.

• Helped in considering usability / user experience.

• Helped in verifying technical feasibility.

Customer Collaboration

• Working with customer as partner.

• No vendor-client relationship.

• Adapting customer’s feedback.

• Supporting customer’s business priorities.

• Owning the success jointly!

Team Collaboration

• Developers and Testers co-located.

• Team directly working with customers.

• Tools for remote collaboration (e.g. webex, skype, video conferencing etc).

• Personal Kanban board.

• Johari window for group feedback.

Value-based prioritization

• Minimal Marketable Feature (MMF)

• Defining features list for product beta-release, Go-live etc.

• Incorporating customer feedback after initial launch.

• Building product roadmap based on customer feedback, business criticality and technical debt.

• Project Management Tool

– Excel / Jira / ZilicusPM / Google Docs

• Beta Testing– TestFlight / Simulators

• Automated / Performance Testing– Selenium / Jmeter

• Configuration Management Tool– Git

Technology Ownership

Collaboration Games

The Outcome!

Sentizens – Social Networking App

An innovative social networking platform designed exclusively for Senior citizens to share, collaborate, learn & avail variety of services with focus on holistic living. www.sentizens.com

Special features:

• Posting, Liking, Sharing, Join Groups• Event reminders as default setting • Configured Skype contacts • Clocks of different time zones • Store contacts and information • Relevant articles on health, finance etc.• Services in proximity • Option to increase Font size

Consoft – Video Conferencing Platform

Free public conference tool

• Available to all - Education, Government, Corporate & General Public • Be a Speaker or Moderator• Real time feedback from audience• Real time communication (audio and video) with audience • Reach all your Corporation offices in different countries• Include power point or video presentation control by Speaker

Free private conference tool

• Private conference call up to 4 computers • Make private calls or invite to join • Invite your contact

Pvt. Messaging• Able to send video message offline or online

Learnings

• Define core subset of processes as per project needs

• Define your project management, tracking mechanism (Lean Startup, Scrum, Kanban, SDLC)

• Explore Open source tools: Asana, Basecamp, HipChat, Unfuddle, Bugzilla

• Validate ideas, thoughts, implementations with customers, end users

• Inspect & Adapt

Summary• Functional Specs / Product Backlog cannot be

replaced by just Wireframes!

• T&M Engagement vs. Fix bid for evolving projects.

• Strong customer collaboration results in great outcome.

• Early involvement of potential users significantly helps in verifying the business viability / user expectations.

• Build what the customer needs!

About Faichi Solutions

We are a technology company in Pune, India specializing in outsourced product engineering & setting up offshore development centers.

We hold expertise in technologies such as Drupal, Java, Mobile and UI/UX development.

Established in 2009, with a vision to transform the outsourced product engineering landscape through technical excellence and delivery model innovation.

Faichi Solutions has successfully delivered some of the most complex technology projects through partner collaboration & Agile processes.

To read case studies of Faichi Solutions, please visit: www.faichi.com/success-stories

For more information please visit: www.faichi.com or mail us at sales@faichi.com

USA India Faichi Solutions Inc Faichi Solutions Pvt. Ltd. 2023 Mandelay Pl 504, Accord IT Park, Baner Road, San Jose, CA 95138 Pune, Maharashtra – 411045 Tel: +1 (408) 769-4941 Tel: +91-20-65291435 ©2014 Faichi Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

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