10C Agile Product Delivery Method

Successful products have one thing in common: a method for creating and refining their scope, as well as a disciplined, value-driven way of delivering them. In this playbook, we will explain what the product delivery process at 10Clouds looks like and the benefits that it can bring your business - beginning with successful product launches. We will clearly explain the goals and value of every phase, the roles and responsibilities of the people involved, the tools and methods used and the level of engagement needed from your side to effectively collaborate in product creation.

In our approach, we draw heavily from well-established frameworks including Scrum and Kanban. Putting our many years of experience to good use, we integrate them with our best practices around external collaboration, working in a remote environment and managing distributed teams. Because we are agile, we can respond quickly to changes, allowing you to control the delivery process.

“Product Delivery is at the heart of our business. We are reliable partners throughout the whole product lifecycle, supporting our customers to build products and services that deliver real value to their end users and achieve market success”

Michał Kłujszo

Head of Delivery, 10Clouds

Over the last two decades, Agile approaches have continuously proven to be more efficient in software development than traditional ones - which is something that we’ve personally observed when working with clients. They enable the best use of the team’s potential. This is why we’ve built our 10C Methodology on Agile values and principles.

Here are just some of the benefits that you reap from Agile working:

• Higher rates of successful product delivery
• Shorter time to market
• Better product quality
• Adapting the product to changing market/user needs
• Increased customer/end-user satisfaction
• Increased project transparency
• Easier risk management

To make sure that our clients also benefit from Agile, we draw inspiration from leading frameworks such as Scrum or Kanban, especially when it comes to the delivery process.

However, at 10Clouds we felt the need to make the delivery approach more product-centric and put the product value at the forefront explicitly. While the leading agile frameworks do highlight the crucial relevance of proper product management, too often their actual real-life usage does not treat this aspect seriously enough, focusing more on process mechanics.

Therefore, we believe that 10Clouds Agile Delivery Method serves our clients better. Below are just some of the additional benefits that it delivers:

• Applying the 10C Agile Delivery Method and utilizing reusable components can increase the product Completion Ratio by 30% and reduce Development Costs by 25%.
  Excellent agile planning and prioritization methods make it possible to build the most important product features and instantly test them on the market. Getting faster insights means lower overall cost of the development, as well as improved and faster results.
  Whenever it’s reasonable, we aim to apply reusable components. Based on our years of experience, we designed pre-existing starters for frontend layouts and infrastructure that speed up the development by weeks. This means that the process of setting up environments now takes a few hours instead of a couple of days.
• The product value focus and continuous discovery
  We have made sure that good product management is central to every step of the product's life cycle. A lot of articles and books in recent years have pointed out the shortcomings of leading frameworks in the area of product management; our approach addresses these issues. With 10Clouds, you also have access to a great UX Research team that shares its knowledge and best practices with the 10Clouds Product Delivery Management (PDM) team.
• Flexibility while drawing from best industry practices
  We have taken the elements that we found useful from various industry best practices, and combined them with tested methods and standards from our projects. We’re not dogmatic in applying schemes and procedures that may be unnecessary or cumbersome, and which might take time and money from our clients.
• PDM as a delivery partner
  To better support the product-centricity of our delivery process, we have defined the role of PDM as a natural extension of the Scrum Master or Agile PM role. With the PDM, the Product Owner (PO) on the client's side gains an experienced partner with good product management skills, who can help drive the value of the product throughout its lifecycle. Our PDM team possesses a wealth of knowledge in process and product management, which enables us to effectively serve our clients.
• Project health framework
  In all our projects, we want to be transparent and proactive in risk management, which is why we have defined a lightweight set of standards and practices that we follow. This will give you peace of mind about the project's progress and future.
• 10Clouds Enabling Team (Tech Hub)
  The Enabling Team consists of Tech Leaders who help set up projects based on company standards and support initial tech-related assumptions and decisions, removing any roadblocks that would appear further down the road. The idea is to make sure that the Development Team members don’t lose focus on unnecessary distractions. Our ultimate goal is to provide you with the highest quality technical solutions based on our 12+ years of experience and modern technology.

We are aware that creating a successful product does not start with development. A good outcome mostly depends on the quality of the preceding stages. Most failures can be attributed to a lack of product-market fit. This can be fixed with solid market research, rapid testing, pivots and continuous discovery.

Then, development itself requires a different approach depending on the business maturity of your product.

Our team is fully aware of what needs to be done at every stage of product delivery. We work with companies at every stage of the product lifecycle: from defining product strategy, validating the idea on the market with a prototype, testing a product with an MMP, to finding a product-market fit, scaling it, and finally, sustaining market share.

We use the 10C product delivery lifecycle as a starting point for working with our clients. At the initial stage of cooperation we carefully analyze:

• your business needs and goals
• the biggest challenges you’re facing right now
• the current status of the product
• your time to market expectations

Thanks to this we know exactly which phase of the lifecycle your product is in, and we can offer you the most suitable model of cooperation.

You can find the full product lifecycle overview below.

INSIGHT | Market insight strategy

Goal: Understanidng market landscape

Focus: Researching and analyzing the market, defining product strategy

10C approach: Product strategy consulting

DISCOVERY | PROTOTYPE

Goal: Validating product idea on the market

Focus: Adapting rapidly to new insights from customers and the market

10C approach: Product discovery phase

INTRODUCTION | MMP

Goal: Launching the first version of the product

Focus: Developing the solution and preparing metrics to validate your business assumptions

10C approach: 2-months MMP development

GROWTH | Product Scaling

Goal: Taking full advantage of the market opportunities

Focus: Supporting growing numbers of users while optimizing technical solution

10C approach: Data-driven development

MATURITY | Maintenance

Goal: Sustaining market share

Focus: Customer satisfaction and battling churn.

10C approach: Cost optimization

Product lifecycle overview - 01

Insight Stage

This is the starting point for customers who have a general product idea. This phase is about verifying whether the problem that you are looking to solve is worth the effort.

Overview

During this stage the team (which involves both you - the client and 10Clouds) will work on understanding the problem, verify how big and important it is and understand who the clients/end users are. The team will also start defining how the product can solve this problem, what other solutions are already on the market and how the product can provide value to future clients.

Goal

In this stage, we aim to understand the market in general and define the product strategy based on the market research. The goal is to create the product strategy that will allow further work on your product to be efficient and aimed at value creation, taking into account the market and potential users.

Value

• Creating a successful product is not possible without understanding the problems we want to solve. The better the team understands these problems, needs, pain points, personas etc. the more likely it is that they will come up with a valuable product.
• Initial verification of clients’/users’ needs and problems and defining personas is the first step to involving clients or users in product development.
• You gain a business partner instead of a (purely technical) delivery partner.

10Clouds approach

The Insight phase is built around workshops and research. Most of the exercises used by consultants, UX researchers, product designers, and technical experts come from the Design Thinking and Lean Startup approaches. On your side, you need to have people with knowledge about the market, product vision, target customer groups and end users. Together we will identify what we know and in which areas more research is needed, especially involving the end users.

The duration of the Insight Phase depends on the product complexity and the need for research. On average it can last 3 - 6 weeks.

Product lifecycle overview - 02

Discovery Stage

This is a starting point for customers who have already defined their product strategy and want to pursue the product further without investing in development.

Overview

During this stage the team (which includes you - the client - and 10Clouds) undertakes to test the initial product strategy in the market involving future customers to see if our solution is worth building. The team needs to evaluate whether it correctly identified the core user problems and features that will be pain relievers or gain creators for them. The evaluation should be relatively quick and cost-effective, as well as iterative. The team will experiment, seeking product and market fit, while actually measuring it.

Value

• Full-fledged products are expensive to make and have a high chance of failing as they may not deliver enough value to customers. Using different early stage testing methods can help validate solutions on the market and reduce possible waste.
• This phase lets clients validate the value of the entire solution as well as the value of particular solution features. Users can suggest what to change or add to make your service more valuable.
• This is also a chance to get initial hints from the users on the UX side which can be later used when designing the product interface.
• You gain the opportunity to make changes and serve a real need in the market.
• With prototypes, you gain a valuable tool that you can use to attract investment.
• Confirming your assumptions is great for morale and can give you the motivation to keep going when things get tough.

10Clouds approach

This stage consists of workshops, research and design/development activities aimed at creating prototypes that can be tested. At this stage, we often use the Design Sprint framework. We engage UX researchers, product designers, developers, and Product Delivery Managers. You ought to involve the same people as in the Insight Stage, but with more focus on managing the interactions with end users - in some cases you might also coordinate and execute campaigns on social media for prototype testing etc.

The duration of the Insight Phase depends on the product complexity, required research and the number of end users involved. On average it can last 3 - 6 weeks.

Deliverables

Product lifecycle overview - 03 & 04

Product Delivery - Introduction and Growth Stages

In line with the principles of Lean and Agile, we strongly advise our clients to split the delivery into releases so that a Minimum Marketable Product (MMP) can be put on the market as soon as possible.

MMP is the first version of a product that can be released to the market as a proper product. It has a sufficient set of features to provide value to the users, but not all of them. This allows us to build up the user base, start making money on the product, test it and get relevant feedback from users, which is important for the future success of the product at the development stage.

The product roadmap (MMP and beyond) and initial backlog, based on the needs identified in the earlier phases, are kept up-to-date to ensure that the product is useful and delivers business value.

We believe that product management activities should be data-driven (which is why we will help you define and measure the right product metrics) and conducted in close collaboration with stakeholders, in particular the end users. This is why Continuous Discovery - encompassing the UX Research activities - needs to be part of the product delivery.

Goal

The goal is to deliver your product - first in the MMP version and then in further releases, based on data and inputs from internal and external stakeholders.

The goal of the MMP is to:

• put the product on the market and monetize it
• create a customer base
• gather feedback about the product and its further development

Following the MMP, the focus usually is on those areas:

• Increasing stability and scalability - making it robust and ready to grow
• Developing an enhanced version through a series of iterations
• Creating your own IP

Why do we recommend splitting into releases and starting with an MMP?

• Less time to launch
  Building an MMP for a product is finding the sweet spot between the minimum work and maximum value. As a result, products will be delivered more quickly.
• Less room for error
  With the work split into smaller chunks, teams can test the solution earlier and take fewer project risks. As a consequence, a development team has less code to write and more time to experiment and iterate on the client's idea.
• Budget-friendliness
  An MMP makes it more affordable to start a business.
• A chance to find investors and raise funding
  An MMP can showcase the seed of what is expected to become a new and exciting product - which is particularly useful when trying to convince investors.
• Establishing a customer base
  Another reason behind developing an MMP is to make it available to real users. After you’ve released a product, the goal is to keep evolving and adapting it to the needs of your customers. Regardless of feedback, you’ll know if your product is ready for the market based on this information.

How do we organise the software delivery of the MMP and beyond?

10C Product Delivery is Agile - we draw from the Agile Manifesto and the leading agile frameworks, particularly Scrum and Kanban.

To ensure the quality of our collaboration with clients, we have a company-wide project health process that covers all of our projects. This encompasses team and client satisfaction, delivery health (budget, timeline and scope), as well as risk management.

We have also defined standards and practices for Product Delivery Managers to ensure that in all projects we properly deal with the following aspects that are relevant to the project’s success:

• Product (backlog) management
• Product quality
• Delivery process quality
• Communication and Transparency
• Team building
• Formalities and procedures

Project onboarding

In this phase, the Product Delivery Manager (PDM) liaises with you on the methods of collaboration. This includes:

Product delivery

The delivery can be based on Scrum (with sprints - fixed-length events aimed at delivering a product increment) or Kanban (no sprints). The 10Clouds PDM will ensure that in both cases, all required elements of the process are happening and that the process is managed well to increase efficiency. We select the approach, taking into account the specifics of each product delivery. We’ve found that in most cases, the approach based on Scrum fits best.

The Product Owner on your side will manage the product roadmap and backlog, with the PDM’s support (more details in the section Roles and Responsibilities). Together with the team, as part of the project onboarding, you will define how the product backlog items should be described so that they are ready for development.

In projects that cover both design and development, especially ones that require heavily customised and complex design, we typically aim to start the work on design before engaging the developers. In this way, the designs serve as the basis for further refining the product backlog items together with developers.

However, we may advise our clients to start at the same time, especially if the user interface is simple and can be based on standard components or standard frameworks; in this way, it is possible to proceed with the delivery work more quickly and test the design ideas on actual screens.

Work cadence

Usually, we’re working in 2-week sprints, but depending on the specific product situation, the client and PDM can suggest a different duration. An example of a 2-week sprint cadence can look like this:

• Day 1
  Daily meeting
  Review, Retro, Planning
• Day 2
  Daily meeting
• Day 3
  Daily meeting
  Product roadmap & backlog management (PO, Tech Lead, PDM)
• Day 4
  Daily meeting
• Day 5
  Refinement of backlog for next sprint(s)
• Day 6
  Daily meeting
• Day 7
  Daily meeting
• Day 8
  Daily meeting
• Day 9
  Daily meeting
• Day 10
  Daily meeting

At the end of the sprint, a new potentially shippable product increment is created and the client can decide to release a new version to end users.

During planning, the team and Product Owner discuss what the next sprint's goal should be and what items from the backlog should be taken to the sprint (tasks, bugs, user stories). The aim is to select the items that will bring the most value.

The team inspects its progress towards the sprint goal during daily meetings and uses that information to adjust the work plan.

The results of the work are presented in the review stage, which is also an opportunity to gather feedback and review the backlog, to verify priorities and value of the product backlog items.

The team then uses the retrospective meeting to discuss improvements to see how they work together.

During the sprint, we organize meetings dedicated to reviewing the roadmap and the backlog for the future sprints, and refining the latter, so that it is ready for further planning.

Progress tracking

Usually we use Jira for backlog management and defining the product backlog items (user stories, tasks). Our standard delivery process maintained in Jira allows to easily understand the status of work and helps ensure quality management as well as clear acceptance:

In Jira, you will be able to see the status of individual backlog items as well as of the whole sprint. This transparency is crucial to the project's success.

On top of that, you can expect the PDM to provide you with updated information about the progress and budget consumption.

Project Health

All our projects are covered by the Project Health process which includes the following metrics:

• Delivery Health: scope, budget, time
• Client satisfaction
• Team satisfaction
• Risks

In case of any issues, the PDM and Account Manager, together with the assigned Project Owner from the 10Clouds management team, discuss and implement the required actions.

Quality assurance

We have a holistic view of product quality that encompasses several aspects:

Definition of Done

For all the points above - the task must meet the Acceptance Criteria

Differences between Introduction and Growth delivery models

The delivery process remains the same in Introduction and Growth phases, however there are some differences that you may expect:

Product lifecycle overview - 05

Maintenance

After a product go-live that covers all currently required features, 10Clouds can support its ongoing maintenance.

The goals are:

• To keep the product in good shape so that it continues to satisfy clients and remain competitive
• To address market needs by small adjustments that let customers use a good quality product over a longer time/ during the product’s lifespan
• proactively managing infrastructure to manage the costs and performance

During the maintenance phase, we advise our customers to gather user feedback and actively verify if new features or modifications are required. It is also a chance to put on hold features that are not used to keep the solution simple and more scalable.

The monitoring scope can cover various types of monitoring services to quickly fix any availability issues, as well as upgrade certificates and other components to ensure that the product stays safe and up to date.

Handover to 10Clouds Maintenance Team is a defined process that ensures proper knowledge and documentation transfer; if there’s a need, the Maintenance Team can also reach out for consultation to developers that were involved in product development.

Together with your Account Executive / Account Manager, you will be able to define the scope and level of required maintenance support; for communication with the Maintenance Team, Jira Service Desk will be used, providing you with good visibility of issues and their statuses.

Since our approach is rooted in Agile values and principles, the core of 10Clouds product delivery is a self-managing team, supported by a Product Delivery Manager (PDM).

You will collaborate with:

• The Development Team
  (Usually: developers, QA, QAA, designers, Devops) that is responsible for delivering a product aligned with the agreed upon quality standards, as well as for actively supporting product backlog management. In line with all agile approaches, we want the team to be autonomous - they get to decide how they will work on the product.
• Tech Lead
  For all projects, we provide the development team with the support of a senior developer who is able to define the technical architecture, including integrations, technical standards and practices, provide insights for the product roadmap and backlog management, as well as support the daily work of the developers for example via code reviews or consultations around development options, libraries, frameworks etc. If on your side there’s a software architect or a Tech Lead, 10Clouds Tech Lead will be their partner in defining and managing the technical excellence of the delivery.
• A Product Delivery Manager
  Who will, from 10Clouds’ side, drive efficient delivery of a valuable product. The PDM will set up and maintain the process and support good product management. This is a role that goes beyond that of a Scrum Master or Project Manager in its focus on product value.
• Account Manager / Account Executive
  Who will deal with all contractual matters and ensure smooth cooperation.

Additionally, the team will have access to the Tech Hub - Enabling Team composed of Tech Leaders for consultations during the project onboarding and throughout the development. This helps the team make code that is robust, easy to maintain, and scalable in the future.

From your side, we need a Product Owner, subject-matter experts as well as ensuring that the assumptions, prototypes and product iterations can be verified with the relevant stakeholders, including end users.

Our understanding of the Product Owner is derived from the Scrum Guide: the main responsibility is maximizing the value of the product. The Product Owner works on the product roadmap and backlog and is responsible for accepting (or giving feedback about) the work deliverables.

10Clouds’ PDM will be a partner for the PO in product management. For example, a PDM can take care of describing backlog items in Jira, preparing suggestions for the roadmap and backlog ordering, as well as suggesting ways of engaging stakeholders and measuring the product.

We use a set of best practices and standards in our daily work to make sure that our projects are run as quickly and productively as possible. All projects are covered by a Project Health process, allowing for transparent communication and quick decision loops around project metrics, including risks.

In addition, 10Clouds Product Delivery Managers work together as a team to increase their knowledge and skillset.

The 10Clouds Agile Method checklist covers the following main areas of interest whose execution quality we monitor:

Communication & transparency

Delivery process

Product backlog management

Product quality

Team building

Formalities and procedures

To support our PDMs in their daily work, we have accumulated a plethora of tools and techniques for driving product delivery:

• Product management toolbox, incl. discovery techniques, prioritization techniques, tools like Story Mapping, refinement practices etc
• Workshops and project meetings facilitation toolbox
• Team collaboration toolbox
• Project Health metrics toolbox, incl. risk management
• And others

Our Sales and Presales teams will be in touch with you, to understand your product and your needs, so that we can select the collaboration model that is most fitting.

• Insight stage collaboration: if you have a general idea for your product, but have not yet done a lot of research to hone your product strategy.
• Discovery stage collaboration: if you want to verify your product strategy, define your product in more detail and test its prototype.

If you have already done the work from the Insight and Discovery stages, and you have materials like Lean Canvas, user personas, Value Proposition Canvas, and other product strategy related research results, and you are certain that those are sufficient to start working on the final product, we will suggest moving into the Delivery stage of the project.

We start our Delivery projects with Lean Inception - usually it takes one week for you and the team to establish all rules of cooperation and delve into the product scope. The shared understanding and awareness of the business context and goals will foster efficient delivery throughout the project. During this period, the team will work on the technical side to prepare for the start of the delivery phase. You can read more about Lean Inception in our blog post.

Based on the materials you provide and our conversations, the 10Clouds Presales team might suggest spending more time on honing and researching your product strategy. If that's the case, we will suggest a customised approach, such as a series of workshops or a longer "discovery" phase.

Key takeaways from the Playbook:

10Clouds has been delivering software since 2009. Our strategy leverages our expertise in consulting, design and technology to help businesses perform at the peak, so they can create long-term value for their customers and shareholders. Based on our extensive experience, we have established the most effective process to accelerate time-to-market, cut development costs, launch products successfully and maximize their return on investment.

We partner with our clients to help them build the right product for the right market - so that they can create a sustainable business around it. Modern application development requires more than a fantastic product idea; you must have an in-depth understanding of your users and customers to craft an effective product strategy. Our primary goal is to get the business value correct while minimizing the risk of failure.

We are an all-in-one partner who can support you throughout your business and product development journey.