Tristar - a model to fix estimation and release planning?

A couple of weeks ago I asked "is estimation and release planning in software development fundamentally broken?" here on LinkedIn. And yes, in my opinion, it is. So, how could we fix it?

I’m back in eBayPlus including points rewards since the beginning of the year. It’s a rather small area, and this gives us the opportunity to very closely collaborate with the German business unit. In fact, we, as a product development team including a product manager, constantly discuss customer and business needs together with the BU and form them into features.

👉 Together we prioritize the features based on customer and business needs.

If a feature needs to be live by a certain date, we take this into account and work on it way ahead of time using feature flags to control its exposure to the customers.

👉 Our roadmap contains no dates, we don’t estimate - we simply deliver.

Like the famous aircraft Tristar uses 3 engines mounted on different sections of the fuselage working in harmony to power the plane, 3 individuals from different areas drive the efforts to fulfill customer and business needs.

The Tristar system:

• BU, Product Owner and Engineering lead steer the efforts together, sharing common goals

• once the budget is exhausted, decide to invest more if the numbers look good or to move on to the next area

• if features are bound to dates (contractual obligations, regulations…) they are prioritized higher and delivered simply earlier as risk mitigation

Working in this model avoids additional pressure on the development team with all its negative implications, like shortcuts (or tech debt), quality issues and risk of burn out. The continuous communication between product development and business unit avoids negative surprises, creates a common understanding, increases trust and fosters a common bond across units and functions.

Let's discuss!

Please let's discuss on LinkedIn.