C O P SCentral Online Publishing

SystemProject and Team Organization

Stigasoft-Metro Team3/16/2015

Agenda• Stigasoft• Success Roadmap• Astonishing Results• Agile Scrum• Product Backlogs• Product Roadmaps• Project Areas• Project Meetings• Project Roles & Collaboration• Team @Stigasoft• Teams & Responsibilities

StigasoftYour Agile IT Solution Partner

Aim

To constantly strive to anticipate the rapidly changing needs of our clients and to develop new services to meet

those needs

Global Solutions

Business Intelligence

ERP & CRM Solutions

Mobile Solutions

E-Commerce & CMS Solutions

Portal & Intranets

Client Base

India

Sweden

USA

UK

Japan

Global Technologies

Microsoft technologies

Java / J2EE technologies

Open Source technologies

Frameworks & CMSs

Mobile apps

Adobe technologies

ERP & Business Intelligence

Stigasoft & Metro

More than 10 years of strong collaboration

Excellent teamwork

Competence building

Commitment to perform

Create Success

Success Roadmap - Implementations

… 2011• Wordpress blogs• Readmetro – new

version• Mobile app v1

2012• PR launch• Responsive websites• Touch websites #1

• SOLR search engine #2

• Mobile app v2

2013• HUB launch• Nirvana #3

• FR new domain project

• New Towers setup & migration #4

• Mobile app v3

2014• US launch• GT launch• Smart Article project• New ad-position in

gallery carousels• Native ads #5

• GTM implementation #6

• New Relic monitoring tool

• Articles pages caching in Nirvana

• Mobile app v4

2015• CDN Migration to

Limelight #6

• MSN feeds (outgoing) for SE

• Reuters feeds (incoming) for US

• EC launch (to be done)• Topic pages caching in

Nirvana

Success Roadmap - Process

… 2011• Incident and Problem

Management process• Zendesk tool for

Incident management• NO development and

QA process

2012• Product Backlog• 3-weeks Sprints• Weekly status

meetings• Planned releases• Sprint demos• Jira tool for product

management

2013• Introduction of

Architecture backlog• Retrospective

meetings• Initiated architecture

and operations meetings

• Jira Capture tool for test sessions

• Refined Incident and Problem Management process

• GoodData integration

2014• 4-weeks Sprint• Introduction of Quick

Stream backlog• Introduction of Smart

Article backlog• Continuous

Integration• Confluence tool for

product plans and artifacts

• Efficient release process – one release post every Sprint

• Product Roadmap defined

2015• Continue the GOOD

practices• Optimize processes• Refine Product and

Market Roadmaps

Pre-ScrumEra

Post-ScrumEra

Upsides• SCRUM Agile process• Balanced approach towards new development and maintenance• Continuous stakeholder involvement• More visibility and transparency• Flexibility in responding to changes• Planned and successful releases - 12 releases per year• Planned and controlled execution of new markets launches• High performing server environments• Well managed server operations

Downsides• No control on process• More maintenance work than new development• Impossible aligning with market-specific requirements• Unplanned releases – 1/2 releases per year• Extensive post-release bug fixing effort• Huge server alarms rate• Shared environments risked other markets should one be affected

Astonishing Results

Effective planning and prioritization

Working software delivered

each Sprint

Production deployment every Sprint

Improved Business

Value

Collocated Teams

(SD, DEV, ARCH, OPS,

QA)

Strong Collaboration

High technical and

product knowledge

Good Competency

+ High

Motivation

Continuous stakeholders involvement

Architectural advances

Operational efficiency

Commitment to quality

Building the “right thing”

AND the “thing right”

Development process

Release process QA process

Incident and Problem

Management process

Improved Overall Product Quality

Improved Overall Product Quality

We VALUE

SCRUMopeneSsFor increased visibility,

To get to heart of issues

CourageTo confront problems,

To act, To be open

RespectFor constructive

criticismfocUs

To do your job

commitMentTowards a goal

Product BacklogsProduct

Management(40 points)

Planned

Plan functions from Product Roadmap and/or

market requests

Prioritize items on business value

Architecture(40 points)

Planned

Plan and prioritize implementations that compliment Product

Management backlog

Plan and implement architecture solutions for

optimizing application performance

Smart Article(40 points)

Planned

Focus on smart-article project requirements

Prioritize items on business value

Quick Stream(40 points)

Unplanned

Primarily designed for handling escalations during

the Sprint

Plan and prioritize small and simple items from Product Management

backlog

Product Backlogs - Challenges

With more focus on building a product, it is tricky to align and prioritize incoming market-specific requests.Solution: One alternative may be to plan market-focused product backlogs

Prioritizing market-specific

requirementsSince quick-stream is an unplanned bucket, planned items are often postponed and tricky to prioritizeSolution: One alternative may be to define quick-stream backlog for handling escalations only

Planning Quick Stream

Backlog

Product Roadmap

Markets RoadmapCL

• Auto-rotation for galleries ad-position after every 3 clicks (WiB-2041)

• New ad positions (WiB-1136, WiB-619)

• Remove ‘h’ from timestamp (WiB-1149)

HUB

• Handling internal links within articles (WiB-1954)

• Make sure HUB stats are not lost in local articles (WiB-1625)

• Make sure category is updated in local markets (WiB-1662)

FR

• Selection of main content-group / topic (WiB-1954)

• Improve overall performance

• Send topic info in ad calls (WiB-2012)

• Add XL/L selection for HTML component (WiB-1659)

• Display all topics pages as links under articles (WiB-1498)

• Most shared teaser

SE

• “Debat” articles• Most-shared teaser• 3/4-column ad-position

on section pages

Handling Escalations -Suggestions

Should be prioritized based upon, may be business impact, probability of occurrence, and political significance

All escalations should be investigated and solved under the “unplanned“ Quick Stream backlog

Should the Quick Stream be empty when an escalation arrives, extra effort may be employed outside working hours depending on the level of escalation and severity of the problem

Project AreasProcess Management - Scrum

Planning and Prioritization

Product Backlog Grooming

Release Management

Service Desk Management

Escalations

Development

Quality & Testing

Architecture

Operations

User Experience

Inspect and Feedback

Project Meetings• Start of every Sprint - Tue• Decide Product Backlog items to be DONE in the upcoming SprintSprint Planning• Once every week - Wed• Groom and prioritize user-stories / use-cases with the objective of making items READY for next SprintProduct Backlog Grooming• Bi-weekly – Tue & Thu• Walkthrough Sprint items and review progress / remove obstaclesStatus Review Meetings• End of every Sprint – Thu• Showcase to stakeholders Sprint items that are DONESprint Demo• End of every Sprint – Thu• Inspect and Feedback on experiences from previous SprintSprint Retrospectives• Once every week – Fri• Define architecture roadmap, design and refine long-term arch. Solutions, setup focus areasArchitecture Meetings• Once every week• Define operations roadmap, setup focus areasOperations Meetings• Once every week – Wed• Involve Datacenter and Roxen for gauging application and server environments’ health and share feedbackHosting Meetings• Once every week – Mon• Improve visibility and collaboration on issues between QA and Dev teamsIssues Forum

Project Roles

Scrum Master

• Darío Morán

Product Owners

• Susana Díaz• Swaminathan

Guru• Armando

Peñafiel

Release Manager

• Swaminathan Guru

Team(Dev, UI, Arch, Ops)

• Darío Morán• Abhay Gupta

Service Desk

• Kapil Dev

Customers

• Chile• Colombia• France• Guatemala• HUB• Mexico• Puerto Rico• Russia• Sweden• United States

Roles Collaboration

Developer-2

Developer-3

Developer-1

Developer-4

Developer-5

Architect

ArchitectDev.Manager+

Architecture

Dev.Manager+

OperationsOpsManager

UI/UX

Product Management

Tester

Tester

ProductOwner-1

QualityAnalyst

Analyst

Analyst

ServiceDesk

Manager

ProductOwner-2

Service Desk

Development

Team @Stigasoft40 YEARS cumulative project experience

Abhay Gupta

Manager8 years

Anil Kumar

Developer3 years

Ashok Pal

Mobile Manager5 years

Nishi Tilara

Developer7 months

Partha Majumdar

Quality Analyst3 years

Pawan Yadav

Developer12 months

Rahul Bhardwaj

Service Desk2 years

Ruchika Gupta

Quality Analyst12 months

Shashank Tiwari

Operations12 months

Shubhra Bhardwaj

Service Desk3 years

Shuvendu Pattanayak

Architect10 months

Siddharth Sharma

Architect3 years

Suresh Kumar

Developer3 years

Swaminathan Guru

Product Manager5.5 years

Varun Agarwal

Developer12 months

Product Management Team

Susana Díaz Armando Peñafiel

Swaminathan Guru

• Create and maintain the Product Backlog• Prioritize and sequence the Product Backlog according to business value or return-on-investment• Convey product roadmap and goals with the Team to keep things on-track• Engage with the customers and stakeholders to ensure building the right product• Collaborate with the development team to ensure building the product right• Assist with elaboration of Epics and features into user-stories to be achieved in a Sprint• Provide clarifications and remove obstacles to ensure the desired functions are carried out

efficiently• Coordinate product launches and decide what functions / features should be released to customers• Provide acceptance criteria and description for user stories. Give UI/UX inputs whenever required• Collaborate with QA-team for supporting creating and approving test-cases. Prioritize and act on

raised issues / bugs• Verify and accept / reject items DONE in the Sprint• Be available at all times to the development team for answering any questions and providing inputs

on product functionality• Understand and evaluate business impact on reported incidents and escalations – both internal

and external• Actively participates in project meetings – Sprint planning, reviews, demos and retrospectives

Process Team (Scrum Master)

Abhay Gupta

Stefan Svensson

• Create and implement Scrum process and ensure the process is accepted and followed• Help Team perform by removing obstacles for the Team and Product Owner• Collaborate between Team and Product Owner• Facilitate project meetings – Daily stand-ups, Sprint planning, reviews, demos and retrospectives• Work with Product Owner to ensure that Product Backlog is always prioritized and READY• Work with the Team and Product Owner for creating the Definition of Done and enforcing its

application• Help development teams to be cross-functional and self-organizing• Ensure that the Team moves at a consistent pace and produce potentially shippable product items

every Sprint• Prevent the Team from external and/or internal distractions or disturbances• Help resolve conflicts• Be extremely approachable by the Team• Conduct trainings and workshops for smooth implementation of Scrum as a process. Preach Agile

Manifesto• Suggest, recommend and provide right software and tools for the Team to function more efficiently• Promote and ensure open communication channels within the Team, and between the Team and

Product Owner

Release Management Team

Dario Moran

Abhay Gupta

Anil Kumar

Shashank Tiwari

Swaminathan Guru

• Create, plan, manage and implement release processes• Create and coordinate release plans and share with stakeholders. Consider

stakeholders’ interests and business needs• Ensure smooth preparation and execution of updates on testing and production

deployments• Continually work towards improving release process• Maintain release check-lists at all times• Brainstorm and implement automation strategies for efficient execution of

production releases• Ensure that release notes and instructions are prepared and sent out prior to

releases• Manage risks and resolves issues that affect release scope, schedule and quality• Measure and monitor progress to ensure application releases are delivered on time

and within the planned window, and that they meet or exceed expectations• Create and maintain release configurations• Encourage continuous integration of builds in testing environments and support

strategies• Enforce that release versioning is maintained while committing builds to production

environments• Develops scripts and automation tools used to build, integrate, and deploy software

releases to various platforms

Architecture Team• Design, develop and maintain applications and related software/tools• Understand product and technical environments, and suggest alternate solutions and

architectures for reaching functional and technical objectives• Support decision-making by preparing documents, diagrams and/or charts for presenting and

sharing solutions ideas and technical workflows with stakeholders• Optimize server, application and DB performance for efficient functioning and user experience• Measure and monitor KPIs for application and server performance in real-time; suggest new

KPIs significant for better monitoring and performance• Identify existing architectural and/or operational bottlenecks and suggest solutions• Manage integrations with CDN and other 3rd party layers• Learn, create and share optimization opportunities, short-term and long-term, with

stakeholders• Automate routine jobs for efficient work-flows• Sync with product owners and development team to understand product development

roadmaps and prepare technical strategies / architectures• Actively conduct and participate in architecture meetings for aligning stakeholders’

expectations with existing architectures and/or build new ones• Investigate and feedback on incidents and problems, reported internally or externally• Efficiently and quickly act on reported escalations• Conduct sessions and workshops for training and knowledge sharing• Share responsibility in improving development, test and production environments• Consistently invest in learning for developing excellent analysis and brainstorming skills• Build knowledge and competencies in the Team

Dario Moran Abhay Gupta

Anil Kumar Shuvendu Pattanayak

Siddharth Sharma Stefan Svensson

Suresh Kumar

Development Team

Abhay Gupta

Nishi Tilara

Anil Kumar

Pawan Yadav

Suresh Kumar

Varun Aggarwal

• Write scalable, readable and efficient web and/or server programs using:• front-end technologies - JS, HTML5, CSS, AJAX, JQuery, XML/JSON• back-end technologies, preferably open-source - XSLT, PHP, Perl, Python, Pike

• Analyse, Groom, Brainstorm and Estimate project requirements and technical solutions• Build and deliver functionality as per the agreed scope, acceptance criteria and release plans• Prepare and deploy product releases in production environments• Track project progress and report status and/or obstacles• Gain knowledge and integrate techniques, like caches, feeds, images, web services etc.• Sync together with architectural and operation teams for gaining insights in ongoing developments and

contribute in development and deployment needs in those areas• Work in sync with Product Owners and QA teams to understand product roadmap and prepare technical

strategies on new architectures and/or reengineering legacy solutions• Seek clarifications and provide inputs for facilitating backlog planning and prioritization• Support QA-team in preparing test-cases and perform tests on delivered project items• Document and diagram solutions alternatives and workflows• Share responsibility in improving development, testing and production environments• Identify and share existing bottlenecks and optimization opportunities• Investigate and feedback on incidents and escalations, reported internally or externally• Provide constructive feedback to help improve development and quality processes• Showcase developed functions and features for in-time stakeholders’ feedback• Conduct training workshops and sessions• Build knowledge and competencies in the Team

Operations Team• Manage and control development, testing and production environments• Plan and manage application and server software installation, upgrades and patches• Review and analyze efficiency of existing applications and develop strategies for improving performance• Automate procedures and operational requests• Prepare and deploy product releases in production environments• Execute, verify and support Tower setups for new COPS markets and sync with DataCenter on related

permissions and configurations. Implement high-availability and DB replication• Facilitate continuous integration (CI) for integrating code continuously and automate build for early

problem detection• Ensure operational efficiency by monitoring server environments and gauging performance on various

factors. Report trends and deviations to stakeholders• Monitor disk-space usages in various environments and suggest needed extensions• Administer operations tools like New Relic• Manage web server (Nginx) configurations and ensure consistent implementation between various market

towers• Act swiftly on reported escalations like downtimes, network outages, broken database replication etc.• Actively participate in operations and hosting meetings• Provide customer support and present technical solutions for reported problems• Perform application tuning, configuration, monitoring, and administration• Analyze custom administrative software requests and present solutions• Optimize application performance through proactive monitoring, maintenance and process improvement• Perform daily application and server monitoring and capacity planning• Enforce and monitor security policies and procedures for software applications

Dario Moran

Abhay Gupta

Shashank Tiwari

Siddharth Sharma

Stefan Svensson

QA Team• Understand, implement and manage QA methodologies and design effective QA processes• Write and execute test plans & test cases• Ensure application quality at all times for all websites and layouts – unit testing, integration testing,

smoke testing, regression testing, sanity testing etc.• Communicate and sync with Product Owners in creating and executing acceptance tests as per the

requirements• Prepare and maintain regressions tests check-lists• Impact and dependency analysis when preparing and executing test-cases to ensure overall

application quality• Gain technical and functional understanding of our systems and contribute in its future developments• Provide feedback on how to improve our applications and tools• Work closely on issues reported by customers and suggest solutions• Support continuous integration by daily updating test environments for early identification and

reporting of issues• Use quality tools for efficient management and reporting• Collaborate with development and architecture teams on identified issues / bugs and ensure smooth

solutioning• Automate tests• Verify and confirm release deliverables and support during production deployment. Monitor releases

and ensure sanity of production environments post-release• Investigate and feedback on incidents and escalations, reported internally or externally• Provide constructive feedback to help improve development and quality processes• Showcase developed functions and features for in-time stakeholders’ feedback

Abhay Gupta

Partha Majumdar

Ruchika Gupta

Siddharth Sharma

UI/UX Team• Write web programming scripts, primarily using frontend technologies - JS, HTML5, CSS2/3, AJAX, JQuery,

XML/JSON

• Support development team in building product functionality

• Design and implement fluid and responsive websites for supporting desktop, tablets and mobiles

• Track project progress and report status and/or obstacles

• Analyze, Groom, Brainstorm and Estimate project requirements and technical solutions

• Create UI wireframes and design mock-ups for exchanging ideas and/or solutions for enhancing user experience and make our applications more user-friendly

• Sync together with architectural and operation teams for gaining insights in ongoing developments and contribute in development and deployment needs in those areas

• Seek clarifications and provide inputs for facilitating backlog planning and prioritization

• Optimize client-end performance for quicker page-load times and rich user-experience

• Help resolve development, technical and functional issues raised internally or externally

• Write documentation and draw diagrams for understanding and sharing of technical solutions for improved decision making

• Share responsibility in improving development and testing environments

• Invest in learning and knowledge of various development frameworks and UI/UX related technologies

• Showcase developed functions and features for in-time stakeholders’ feedback

• Build knowledge and competencies in the Team

Nishi Tilara

Abhay Gupta

Mobile Team

Ashok Pal

• Collaborate with Metro team on successful execution of mobile projects (fixed scope, fixed cost)• Understand business needs for Metro and analyze / groom requirements together with Project Manager• Create UI/UX wireframes and workflows for developing and sharing understanding on how mobile apps /

sites will perform• Identify technical and functional changes and ensure that new mobile-app versions do not impact

functioning for existing users running old app versions• Estimate and prepare schedule and effort plans and share with Project Manager• Design and develop user-interfaces, business logics, APIs etc. for various mobile platforms ( iOS and

Android) based on agreed scope of work• Identify, suggest and implement 3rd party APIs and SDKs• Conduct and be part of all project meetings – grooming, status updates etc.• Continuously involve stakeholders through regular mobile app demos to showcase progress made and

collect feedback / suggestions• Conduct unit and integration tests before submitting apps to the app-stores. Support Project Manager to

verify and approve all implementations on various platforms, OS versions, device sizes etc.• Prepare and submit mobile apps to respective app-stores• Monitor and perform post-launch analysis and activities together with project team• Coordinate and feedback on Service Desk requests on any queries related to mobile apps• Coordinate with COPS development and QA teams for integration support and dependency analysis

Service Desk Team• Question & Answers via Zendesk - Answer & solve “how to” questions, errors reported about COPS platform which includes

WWW, Touch, Apps & all related 3rd party integrations implemented on the website.• Incident / Problem management via Zendesk - Handle incidents / deviations & ensure platform returns to normal or provide a

workaround• Change request management & bug prioritization via Jira - Escalate change requests / bugs to Product team, and move ticket to

Jira for further prioritization.• Software release planning (sprints) & scheduling communication to Metro markets - Communicate release plans to Metro

markets & also send our editorial guides.• Post deployment testing of new functionalities - Though not formally a part of Service Desk support scope, we do post release

testing of functionalities to ensure they are working as intended.• Online / Mobile Advertisement management & troubleshooting - Assist markets with online advertisements, Ad script

implementation & 1st level troubleshooting.• Domain/DNS Management - Manage Metro’s 800 odd domains, register new domains, do paperwork / formalities for registration,

DNS administration – IP pointing, CNAME, MX records etc.• 3rd party integrations - Implement 3rd party scripts like Ads, tracking, special / custom scripts on specific pages (WWW, Mobile)

based on market requirement.• Social Media integration - Implement social apps like Facebook app for commenting, configure social buttons / widgets for

sharing.• Google Analytics, Tag Manager & Webmaster Tool administration - Manage & administer Google Analytics & Google Tag manager

for all markets.• Impart training/education to Online editorial staff on CMS & everything associated with online news portal (WWW + Mobile +

Apps) - Train new staff on COPS – Roxen, Dashboard & all associated tools & products.• Co-ordinate / communicate with 3rd party vendors/suppliers & various stakeholders - Co-ordinate & communicate with 3rd party

vendors like Ad providers, Datacenter, and other external providers involved in implementation of services in COPS platform• New market setup - Help setup new COPS market by gathering requirements, do content mapping / setup / content population,

implement Ads scripts, 3rd party scripts, domain pointing, Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Webmaster etc.• Ticket Reporting & Analytics - Manage & generate ticket reports & share it with online team. Do trend analysis on tickets raised.

Do root cause analysis.• Custom-CSS Skills - Again, though not formally a part of Service Desk support scope, the team has skills to write custom-CSS,

handle CSS issues.

Kapil Dev

Rahul Bhardwaj

Shubhra Bhardwaj

Swaminathan Guru

Metro Service Desk• Service Desk offers a single point of contact for all customer inquiries / requests / issues related to the

Metro International Online business and technical infrastructures.

• Over 5 years Service Desk experience based on ITIL best practices

Roles & Responsibilities

Question & Answers

Incident / Problem / Change

ManagementBug prioritization Service Request

Release communication &

editorial notes

Online Advertisements

Domain / DNS Management

Social Media Management

Google Product Management

Market Education & Setup

Vendor Communication Ticket Reporting

Additional Support Services

Quick-Stream Management

Post deployment testing of new functionalities

3rd party plugin implementations

Custom-CSS Skills

Manage Mobile app administration on

Apple store & Google Play Store

Prepare Editorial user guides

Record description

Incoming email from customer

Type of requestService Request*

Incident*

Classify IncidentCategoryPriority

Business Impact

Assign to Specialist group

Provide solution After resolving

Close Incident

Change Request*

Standard request / Request for information

Customer to provide details

Roadmap?

YES

NO

Queries, Errors, Requests for development and Design is sent to Service Desk email

Target response TimeUrgent: 1hHigh: 4hNormal: 24hLow: 48h

YESNO

The Change is assigned to suitable release or rejected.

Scope (requests) and date for Release is communicated about 2 weeks prior to rollout

1st Time Resolution?

Assign to Release

Rollout = Close Change

Classify ChangePriority

Business impactDetermine cost

Servicedesk Ticket Flow

Requester is informed if the Change was accepted or not.

* See definitions on page 2

Definitions• Service Request: A request from a user for information, or advice, or for a Standard Change or

for access to an IT Service. For example to reset a password, or to provide standard IT Services for a new user.

• Change Request: Requires a change in the existing software, i.e. new functionality (development) or infrastructure (hardware) to be fulfilled.

• Incident: An event which is not part of the standard operation of a service and which causes, or may cause, a disruption to or a reduction in the quality of services and customer productivity.

Products, Tools & Services Supported

• COPS: WWW news portals, Touch sites, Mobile Apps, Dashboard

• WordPress Blog

• www.Readmetro.com & www.issuu.com

• Domain & DNS Management in collaboration with Metro Global IT Team, Regzone & NetNames

• Online Advertisement management & administration

• Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Webmaster Tool

• Limelight CDN portal administration

• Apple / Android development portal administration & support

• PushIO Portal administration & support (For mobile app push notification)

• Zendesk administration

• Atlassian administration - includes JIRA, Agile, Capture, Confluence

• GoodData for ticket reporting & analytics