Product Development Lifecycle

Working with a well-defined product development process resulting in a successful product, and working with an experienced team on how to work and apply this process is a major for your product success. Now, let's see the the product development life cycle.

Software Development Life Cycle 

Product Discovery

A  product  plan  is  kicked  off  with  a  discovery  and market  validation  phase  where  we  frame  the  idea, understand   the   customers   and   users,   envision   a solution   that’s   valuable,   then minimize and   plan   a solution  that  is  feasible  with  the  tools  we  have  and within the required time frame.  

The discovery phase includes collaboration with the UX design  team  where  we  go  through  the  design  process to  come  up  with  the  optimum  design  for  the  problem we’re solving. The deliverables in this phase contain:

•An   executive   summary:   which   is   a   one   page document  containing  an  outline  of  the  features  and why we’re doing them
•A stakeholder map
•A list of user personas
•A user flow diagram
•A product roadmap
•A user journey map
•A low-fidelity wireframe
•A high-fidelity wireframe
•An interactive prototype

Product Development

Start  the  development  process  where  we  kick off by holding a workshop to establish what we’re going to  build,  how  we’re  going  to  build  it  and  why. Applying Scrum, we work iteratively in sprints and we use Jira as our project management platform. We start by holding a workshop  for  user  story  writing and  then  have  a  sprint kickoff meeting to start   the   sprint, have regular standups,  a  retrospective  meeting  once  the  sprint  is done  as  well  as  a stakeholder  product  review  and repeat the process with following sprints/iterations.

Working Agile at Rubikal

Agile   project   management   is   designed   specifically around  software development.  It’s  best  suited  for  fast-paced  and  dynamic  environments  which can  benefit from working in a flexible and iterative manner.

Agile  has  been  a  life-changing  way  for  us  to  work.  It’s proven  to  be  the most efficient  way  to  get  things  done. Concentrating   on   what   we   can   achieve   during   a specific  one-week  or  two-week  period  gives  everyone on  our  team achievable  goals.  It  creates  a  sense  of urgency,  forcing  us  to  make  smart decisions  to  reach our  goals.  It  also  gives  an  individual  contributor  the incredible  feeling  of  accomplishment  when  they  mark their  tasks  as  “done” and  see  the  whole  week  turn green.  This  boosts  team’s  motivation  to  start the  next week fresh and tackle a new set of goals.

Anatomy of  a Scrum Sprint

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” — Parkinson's law

With  Scrum,  we  break  down  big,  complex  projects  into manageable  pieces  on which  we  serially  iterate  on.  A sprint  is  a  recurring  time  frame  in  which  the design, development, testing, and review of those small pieces. A  minor  release  is launched  at  the  end  of  every  sprint. This  way,  we  guarantee  a  steady  pace  of product updates out to users.

A scrum board is where the magic happens. It overlays the product as a list of stories, with priorities, stored in a backlog.  A  sprint  planning  is  one  venue where  stories are  moved  from  the  backlog  to  the  particular  sprint’s backlog.   That’s   where   stories   are   broken   down, estimated,  assigned  to  a  team member.  Once  a  sprint capacity is reached, the sprint is started with a relevant sprint goal.  

Agile process

A   typical   product   engineering   team   would   include backend,  frontend,  and mobile  engineering  members depending   on   the   product   scope.   Quality   control analysts are essential in our team setup. QC guarantees quality  of  the shipped  work  on  a  sprint  to  sprint  basis. Finally,  a  project  manager  whose responsibility  is  to glue   the   different   disciplines   into   one   solid   entity working  towards  a  goal,  which  is  a  shippable  product as fast and as good as possible.

While  the  product  engineering  team  is  building  the features in a sprint, QC is analyzing the stories/features and  coming  up  with  meaningful  test  scenarios that need  to  pass  in  order  to  consider  a  certain  feature  is done.  A  feature  is considered  done  if (and  only  if)  it passed the QC test plan.

Towards  the  end  of  a  sprint,  stories  which  passed  QC analysis  are  deployed and  a  new  increment  of  the product is shipped with the new features included. This process is repeated until a final version of the product is attained.

Agile Ceremonies Demystified

Sprint Planning
The venue where a sprint plan and a sprint goal are set. It’s  attended  by  the entire  team,  including  project  and product  managers.  A  prerequisite  to that meeting  is  a prioritized product backlog. Whose items are discussed with the development  team,  and  the  group  collectively estimates  the  effort  involved. The  product  engineering team  will  then  make  a  sprint  forecast  outlining  how much  work  the  team  can  complete  from  the  product backlog. That  body  of work  then  becomes  the  sprint backlog. It typically takes somewhere between and hour and two hours depending on the sprint length.

Daily Standup
A   standup   is   where   everyone   communicates   their status,  or  any  blockers they  might  be  having.  The  goal of  this  meeting  is  for  everyone  to  stay  in sync,  while implicitly adding a sense of accountability among team members.
It typically takes no more than 15 minutes.

Sprint Retrospective
The purpose of this meeting is to get rapid feedback to make   the   product   and   development   culture   better. Retrospectives  help  the  team  understand  what worked well and what didn't.

Here is a video explaining Agile process:

What is agile project management

We at Rubikal apply a text book Scrum and Agile process and that helped us deliver products faster with a high quality code, if you have a project in mind and want to start please reach out to us now!


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