The Archives

• Kanban Man!, MMF

  The Minimal Marketable Feature (MMF)

  03.22.08 | Permalink | 1622 Comments

  A Minimal Marketable Feature (MMF) is a feature that is minimal, because if it was any smaller, it would not be marketable. A MMF is marketable, because when it is released as part of a product, people would use (or buy) the feature.

  As a counter-example to the MMF approach: While working on an XP team, our team decomposed features into super-small stories. That way the customer (product manager) could pick-and choose from the sub-features to create the big feature. The team would present a list of each sub-feature like a grocery bill — each item has a cost. For example, the customer might decide that pagination (presenting a list of information on multiple pages) just isn’t worth it, because “hey, we only have 25 rows of data right now!”

  An MMF is different than a typical User Story in Scrum or Extreme Programming. Where multiple User Stories might be coalesced to form a single marketable feature, MMFs are a little bit bigger. Often, there is a release after each MMF is complete.

  An MMF doesn’t decompose down into smaller sub-feature, but it is big enough to launch on its own.

  A MMF can be represented as a User Story — a short, one-sentence description.

  The format of a user story is:
  
  As a [some user],
  I want [to do something],
  so that [I can achieve some goal]
  

  But in contrast to how a User Story is typically used, the team would not break down the User Story into smaller User Stories when using MMFs. Think of it this way: *Gather up all the stories that share the same so that clause — that’s your MMF*.

  

• Viva Agilista

  Joe: The Camp Counselor

  03.16.08 | Permalink |

  
  I was interviewed by StickyMinds for their Iterations newsletter.

  “The last thing I’d describe my work as is ‘process support,’” says Joe who at any given time, looks after seven to ten teams across multiple locations of his company. “I feel more like a camp counselor.”

  StickyMinds Iterations: Keystone People

  

• Kanban Man!, Lean & Mean

  Naked Planning: Kanban Simplified

  03.05.08 | Permalink |

  Arlo Belshee giving an overview of Naked Planning at Agile 2007

  

Joe Arnold’s Blog