6-week project

Concept

The 6-weeks-project consists of three 2-weeks sprints.

Prior to each 6-weeks-project an overarching theme of what the team wants to achieve is set. This allocates for approximately 70-80% of the team’s capacity, the rest is reserved for other types of bets, e.g. “Guldkorn”, and allowing for uncertainty.

Having an overarching theme allows the large portion of the preparation and requirements to be shaped prior to the beginning, meanwhile the Scrum-liked sprint-concept still allows for iteration and adjustments along the way.

Six weeks is also a relatively good amount of time for creating a substantial product enhancement, it is not too short, and not too long.

Ceremonies

6-week kickoff

To brief the whole organization we always have a company-wide 6-weeks kick off where our Product Owners briefly talk about what we want to accomplish and especially why we want to do it.

Backlog refinement

The Backlog Refinement is when the team reviews and refines the items for the upcoming sprints. The discussions normally circulate around understanding the scope, identifying risks and unknowns, and technical necessities.

The Product Owner is in charge for preparation for the meeting. Some times the items to be groomed are high-fidelity prototypes and other times is purely a discussion for understand how the technichal scope might effect the overall assessment of a specific item's value.

Sprint Planning

The goal of the Sprint Planning is to collectively agree on the goal of the upcoming sprint. This should not come as a complete surprise as it should be aligned with the overarching goal for the whole 6-weeks project.

When there is a consensus of the Sprint Goal the team moves to make sure that the Sprint Backlog reflects the goal.

The items in the Backlog normally consists of two parts:

• Product Requirement Doc
  The PRD is the parent-item in JIRA and consists of the "What" and "Why".
• Sub-tasks
  The sub-tasks describes the "How". There is not a standarized format for the "How", it could be splitted up technihcal- or feature-based. It is the team that decides what is most efficient in each situation.

The majority of the time the initiatives have been groomed and discussed during the Backlog Refinement, and it is more a matter of confirming the previous discussions.

Standups

Each morning begins with a standup for each team. The purpose of this is simply to get a sense of the current status and if anyone needs help to get unblocked.

Retrospective

The Retrospective is a replica from Scrum and is the ceremony that has had the largest impact on how we operate and work today. It is a forum for celebration, kudos but also collective areas of improvement.

The Retrospective gathers all the product teams and is a cross-functional meeting.

Product Tuesday

Product Tuesday is an one hour meeting where Product Owners can get feedback on potential opportunities from various stakeholders that all represent different voices of our customers. It is also a good opportunity for alignment across the organization.

It is an open setting, which means that the format varies each time. Some times it takes the form of a lightning demo and other times it is discussions regarding both problems and solutions.

Demos

The two first sprints end with a company-wide demo. This allows for a common space to showcase the progress and at the same time keep the whole organisation ajour. The final and last demo of the 6-weeks project is an end-to-end demo. It also marks the end of the product- and customer-facing part of the 9-weeks cycle.

The last demo of the whole 9-weeks-cycle is the demo that concludes the Technichal sprint.

Lessons learned

The first two sprints end with a company-wide demo. This allows for a common space to showcase the progress and at the same time keep the whole organisation ajour. The final and last demo of the 6-weeks project is an end-to-end demo. It also marks the end of the product- and customer-facing part of the 9-weeks cycle.