How Intuit Controls Software Innovation With TSP and Agile

March 24, 2009 · Filed Under Conferences, Software Estimating, Thoughts  - 1 Comment(s)

I heard Scott Cook,  Intuit Chairman and Co Founder speak  on Team Software Process (TSP) and Agile development and how it has impacted both Intuit and other industries.
I was interested in what he called “Customer driven invention.”  He suggested it was misnamed, that Intuit people drive it.  It is really customer inspired invention…  They find an important unsolved customer problem that they can solve well, and have a process for identifying this.

They have been using  TSP for the last 5 years on Quickbooks.  As an example, Quickbooks has a 15 year old codebase and was originally designed for smaller businesses.  But it became the number one accounting software for midmarket businesses as well, generating requirements that were never dreamed of in its original small business design.  The team said, “It is the wrong product for mid market businesses.”  But they were wrong.  They then used this customer driven invention to add in items they would have included initially, had they identified the midmarket as a target initially… For example they reengineered to handle multi-currency.

TSP helped them actually run AHEAD of schedule with less than .6 defects per ksloc.  Normal Quickbooks development  is about 2 defects per ksloc.

Agile

Intuit also uses Agile approaches when “Customer requirements are changing or not known.”  In these situations they apply Agile.  For example TurboTax may have a question that hasn’t been answered.

2 Person team invented the concept called “live community.”  They put into the product itself the ability for customers to both ask and answer the questions.   Team did  agile with 3 week releases. They road tested it in front of customers.  Now on the right hand side of all 20,000 screens are the questions to be asked  and answered. 

Sometimes users made comments as well as answers…    People can also follow threads and add more comments.

 

 


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Comments

One Response to “How Intuit Controls Software Innovation With TSP and Agile”

  1. Lee on March 27th, 2009 9:28 am

    TSP is important but culture is even moreso. Anyone can own a process but it takes creativity, integration and knowledge of how to exploit the different types of communication required to make a team perform optimally. Not to be terribly disparaging, though slightly, this is something a document with radar diagrams cannot bring a team. It takes inspired leadership and employee empowerment to deliver “results beyond process”.

    As a a TurboTax user of many years, I can affirm they’ve got the mojo. BTW, about that new live feed that Dan mentioned, it really is cool!

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