#dogpatch labs

Back in April, I was invited to speak at ProductTank Dublin. This was the 2nd ProductTank event in Dublin and after attending the 1st event and seeing the quality of speakers and attendees, I was excited, happy and humbled to accept the invite.

It was taking place in The Vaults at Dogpatch Labs. This space is a redeveloped wine and whiskey storehouse which has been turned into a 100 seat theatre, 6 meeting rooms, large and small informal breakout spaces and a bar. The vaulted stone ceilings and lighting result in a relaxed, informal atmosphere which is perfect for this kind of event.

I was on stage first, speaking right before Rich Mironov, a product management guru who was speaking about his Four Laws of Software Economics. This was a very interesting and thought provoking talk by someone I can only describe as a rockstar of our industry. I won’t do his talk the injustice of trying to summarise it, but I would highly recommend watching it!

For my talk, I decided to speak about the concept and effects of a process for organising your sprints called the ‘3:2:1 Ratio’. It involves taking 3 stories from your product backlog, 2 stories from your target backlog (flexible backlog for hitting targets, tackling surprise projects etc.) and 1 dev’s choice story. I was really happy with the reaction from the other attendees and I got involved in some interesting follow up discussions afterwards. 

Here is my talk with slides, It’ll take up about 17 minutes of your time, but hopefully you’ll pick up an idea or two that you can experiment with in your agile workflow.