agile

3 posts

woowahan

We Did Everything from Planning to (opens in new tab)

The 7th Woowacourse crew has successfully launched three distinct services, demonstrating that modern software engineering requires a synergy of technical mastery and "soft skills" like product planning and team communication. By owning the entire lifecycle from ideation to deployment, these developers moved beyond mere coding to solve real-world problems through agile iterations, user feedback, and robust infrastructure management. The program’s focus on the full stack of development—including monitoring, 2-week sprints, and collaborative design—highlights a shift toward producing well-rounded engineers capable of navigating professional environments. ### The Woowacourse Full-Cycle Philosophy * The 10-month curriculum emphasizes soft skills, including speaking and writing, alongside traditional technical tracks like Web Backend, Frontend, and Mobile Android. * During Level 3 and 4, crews transition from fundamental programming to managing team projects where they must handle everything from initial architecture to UI/UX design. * The process mimics real-world industry standards by implementing 2-week development sprints, establishing monitoring environments, and managing automated deployment pipelines. * The core goal is to shift the developer's mindset from simply writing code to understanding why certain features are planned and how architecture choices impact the final user value. ### Pickeat: Collaborative Dining Decisions * This service addresses "decision fatigue" during group meals by providing a collaborative platform to filter restaurants based on dietary constraints and preferences. * Technical challenges included frequent domain restructuring and UI overhauls as the team pivoted based on real-world user feedback during demo days. * The platform utilizes location data for automatic restaurant lookups and supports real-time voting mechanisms to ensure democratic and efficient group decisions. * Development focused on aligning team judgment standards and iterating quickly to validate product-market fit rather than adhering strictly to initial specifications. ### Bottari: Real-Time Synchronized Checklists * Bottari is a checklist service designed for situations like traveling or moving, focusing on "becoming a companion for the user’s memory." * The service features template-based list generation and a "Team Bottari" function that allows multiple users to collaborate on a single list with real-time synchronization. * A major technical focus was placed on the user experience flow, specifically optimizing notification timing and sync states to provide "peace of mind" for users. * The project demonstrates the principle that technology serves as a tool for solving psychological pain points, such as the anxiety of forgetting essential items. ### Coffee Shout: Real-Time Betting and Mini-Games * Designed to gamify office culture, this service replaces simple "rock-paper-scissors" with interactive mini-games and weighted roulette for coffee bets. * The technical stack involved challenging implementations of WebSockets and distributed environments to handle the concurrency required for real-time gaming. * The team focused on algorithm balancing for the weighted roulette system to ensure fairness and excitement during the betting process. * Refinement of the service was driven by direct feedback from other Woowacourse crews, emphasizing the importance of community testing in the development lifecycle. These projects underscore that the transition from a student to a professional developer is defined by the ability to manage shifting requirements and technical complexity while maintaining a focus on the end-user's experience.

kakao

What AI TOP 100 (opens in new tab)

The Kakao AI Native Strategy team successfully developed a complex competition system for the "AI TOP 100" event in just two weeks by replacing traditional waterfall methodologies with an AI-centric approach. By utilizing tools like Cursor and Claude Code, the team shifted the developer’s role from manual coding to high-level orchestration and validation. This experiment demonstrates that AI does not replace developers but rather redefines the "standard" of productivity, moving the focus from execution speed to strategic decision-making. ### Rapid Prototyping as the New Specification * The team eliminated traditional, lengthy planning documents and functional specifications. * Every team member was tasked with creating a working prototype using AI based on their own interpretation of the project goals. * One developer produced six different versions of the system independently, allowing the team to "see" ideas rather than read about them. * Final requirements were established by reviewing and merging the best features of these functional prototypes, significantly reducing communication overhead. ### AI-Native Development and 99% Delegation * The majority of the codebase (over 99%) was generated by AI tools like Claude Code and Cursor, with developers focusing on intent and review. * One developer recorded an extreme usage of 200 million tokens in a single day to accelerate system completion. * The high productivity of AI allowed a single frontend developer to manage the entire UI for both the preliminary and main rounds, a task that typically requires a much larger team. * The development flow moved away from linear "think-code-test" patterns to a "dialogue-based" implementation where ideas were instantly turned into code. ### PoC-Driven Development (PDD) * The team adopted a "Proof of Concept (PoC) Driven Development" model to handle high uncertainty and tight deadlines. * Abstract concepts were immediately fed into AI to generate functional PoC code and architectural drafts. * The human role shifted from "writing from scratch" to "judging and selecting" the most viable outputs generated by the AI. * This approach allowed the team to bypass resource limitations by prioritizing speed and functional verification over perfectionist documentation. ### Human Governance and the Role of Experience * Internal conflicts occasionally arose when different AI models suggested equally "logical" but conflicting architectural solutions. * Senior developers played a critical role in breaking these deadlocks by applying real-world experience regarding long-term maintainability and system constraints. * While AI provided the "engine" for speed, human intuition remained the "steering wheel" to ensure the system met specific organizational standards. * The project highlighted that as AI handles more of the implementation, a developer’s ability to judge code quality and architectural fit becomes their most valuable asset. This project serves as a blueprint for the future of software engineering, where AI is treated as a peer programmer rather than a simple tool. To stay competitive, development teams should move away from rigid waterfall processes and embrace a PoC-centric workflow that leverages AI to collapse the distance between ideation and deployment.

kakao

How the POPM program became (opens in new tab)

Kakao developed its internal POPM (Product Owner/Product Manager) training program by treating the curriculum itself as an evolving product rather than a static lecture series. By applying agile methodologies such as data-driven prioritization and iterative versioning, the program successfully moved from a generic pilot to a structured framework that aligns teams through a shared language of problem-solving. This approach demonstrates that internal capability building is most effective when managed with the same rigor and experimentation used in software development. ## Strategic Motivation for POPM Training * Addressed the inherent ambiguity of the PO/PM role, where non-visible tasks often make it difficult for practitioners to define their own growth or impact. * Sought to resolve the disconnect between strategic problem definition (PO) and tactical execution (PM) within Kakao’s teams. * Prioritized the creation of a "common language" to allow cross-functional team members to define problems, analyze metrics, and design experiments under a unified structure. ## Iterative Design and Versioning * The program transitioned through multiple "versions," starting with an 8-session pilot that covered the entire lifecycle from bottleneck exploration to execution review. * Based on participant feedback regarding high fatigue and low efficiency in long presentations, the curriculum was condensed into 5 core modules: Strategy, Metrics, Experiment, Design, and Execution. * The instructional design shifted from "delivering information" to "designing a rhythm," utilizing a "one slide, one question, one example" rule to maintain engagement. ## Data-Driven Program Refinement * Applied a "Product Metaphor" to education by calculating "Opportunity Scores" using a matrix of Importance vs. Satisfaction for each session. * Identified "Data/Metrics" as the highest priority for redesign because it scored high in importance but low in satisfaction, indicating a structural gap in the teaching method. * Refined the "features" of the training by redesigning worksheets to focus on execution routines and converting mandatory practice tasks into selective, flexible modules. ## Structural Insights for Organizational Growth * Focused on accumulating "structure" rather than just training individuals, ensuring that even as participants change, the framework for defining problems remains consistent within the organization. * Designed practice sessions to function as "thinking structures" rather than "answer-seeking" exercises, encouraging teams to bring their training insights directly into actual team meetings. * Prioritized scalability and simplicity in the curriculum to ensure the structure can be adopted across different departments with varying product needs. To build effective internal capabilities, organizations should treat training as a product that requires constant maintenance and versioning. Instead of focusing on one-off lectures, leaders should design structural "rhythms" and feedback loops that allow the curriculum to evolve based on the actual pain points of the practitioners.