Way of Working

The Activity Kit

It’s im­por­tant through­out all phases of a pro­ject to have spe­cific ac­tiv­i­ties and tools avail­able to a soft­ware team to solve prob­lems. For this, it’s rec­om­mended to have an Activity Kit as a col­lec­tion of tools avail­able to teams through­out the soft­ware de­vel­op­ment process. The kit should be a cu­rated list built by var­i­ous lead­ers within all sec­tors of the busi­ness and in many cases, will be deeply in­flu­enced by and tested on nu­mer­ous soft­ware pro­jects. Each ac­tiv­ity should clearly de­fine its pur­pose, how to per­form it and what de­liv­er­ables or out­comes should be ex­pected.

An ex­am­ple of some ac­tiv­i­ties that will be use­ful of­ten in the soft­ware process are as fol­lows. This is not an ex­ten­sive list, how­ever rep­re­sen­ta­tive of some with high value:

• Defining a prob­lem state­ment
• User story map­ping
• Performing dis­cov­ery in­ter­views
• Writing a prod­uct back­log
• Project pri­ori­ti­sa­tion
• Running a ret­ro­spec­tive
• Facilitating a user test­ing ses­sion

There is no for­mula for what ac­tiv­i­ties to run and when to run them. It is en­tirely de­pen­dent on what the pro­ject needs at the time. We rec­om­mend hav­ing a deep un­der­stand­ing of the Activity Kit items avail­able. Then, based on where your pro­jec­t’s at and what is needed, choose the Activity Kit item that fits.

Throughout the Way of Working, you’ll see links and ref­er­ences to Activities. While it is not manda­tory to com­plete them, you may find the hands-on na­ture of an ac­tiv­ity can help add value to your pro­ject.