Symbyl's Story

In 2017, a development manager was hired to "fix" a 5-team development effort gone wrong. The symptoms? An unhappy customer. Product owners arguing with developers over the correctness of delivered code. Testers complaining they were engaged too late and had no hooks to prove correctness of what was about to go out the door.

Sound familiar?

Fast forward 15 months : Those same 5 teams delivered a flawless, bug-free 6-month "Agilefall" solution. This release was a blend of iOS and Android apps and libraries, along with JavaScript web UI and Java server-side code. Guaranteed correct behavior on all code paths. That same customer is now delighted and receiving awards.

But wait, there's more...

Two years later and this success is replicated with 6 Agile Teams enjoying a 20-month string of perfectly bug-free production releases. A new Agile methodology is emerging that the teams call Microstories - and later B3D: Behavioral Driven Design and Development. B3D spreads, allowing other teams to ship their products quickly and without bugs. And an interesting trend emerges: these teams all have stellar morale and almost no turnover.

The secret?

> Start with a Customer Journey - a thin, vertical slice of functionality with the Product Owner laying out the "Happy Path" flow

> Document with a specially enhanced sequence diagram notation that turns this into a Single-Source-of-Truth artifact that all stakeholders can access (eliminate Telephone Game)

> Use automation to drive Stakeholder engagement and refinement, ensuring completion within the pre-sprint timebox

> Architecture, Dev, Test, Operations all embellish this diagram, adding sad paths, drilling down into reusable components and sub-diagrams until the solution is fully thought through. Development estimate individual diagram elements (not the whole thing) in real-world units.

> Unknown areas are identified and flagged for Spike Stories based on an "Options / Evaluation Criteria" decision matrix. Decision support data is gathered scientifically.

> The diagrams become living documentation from which all other artifacts are derived. No more writing user stories, test cases - they're all generated by automation. Diagram version differences are inherently the change requests for subsequent releases!

Let your team focus on solutioning. Let automation ensure no balls are dropped. Let's start writing software the right way.

B3D.

It's easy. Let us show you how.