Q&A

Compliance should be baked into your Definition of Done, not treated as a separate phase. Every user story touching regulated functionality should include compliance acceptance criteria. I also recommend having a compliance representative attend sprint reviews to catch issues early.

I recommend 2-week sprints for most trading teams. The first week focuses on development and internal testing; the second week includes UAT with the trading desk and performance validation. This respects the reality that trading teams are unavailable during market hours.

I use a combination of Scrum-of-Scrums for daily sync, shared dependency boards in Jira, and PI Planning sessions (borrowed from SAFe) for longer-term alignment. The key is making dependencies visible early — not discovering them mid-sprint.

Underestimating the complexity of edge cases. Happy-path order flow is maybe 30% of the work. The remaining 70% is handling partial fills, rejects, cancellations, amendments, and reconciliation. Teams that don't invest in domain modeling upfront pay for it in endless rework later.

Three things: load testing every sprint (simulating 10x normal volume), blue-green deployments for instant rollback, and comprehensive observability — distributed tracing, real-time dashboards, and automated alerting. You should never deploy during active market hours.

I use a WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) framework. Score each item on business value, time criticality, risk reduction, and effort. This turns emotional priority debates into data-driven conversations. The numbers don't lie — and they give product owners defensible reasoning.

Shared OKRs are the foundation. Engineering and product should own the same outcomes, not separate outputs. I also ensure product managers attend standups (briefly) and that engineers attend customer demos. Empathy in both directions is key.