Lean Startup Tools for Agile Product Teams Lean+Agile DC, Feb. 11, 2014
Meet the Presenter Arlen Bankston • Co-Founder of LitheSpeed, LLC • User experience & product development background • 15 years of Agile experience • Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt • Lately 40% training, 20% each of coaching, product development & management 2
Agenda Agile & The Lean Startup Movement Holistic Discovery Risk-driven Product Backlog Exploratory Sprints Data-driven Sprint Review Validating Product Increment
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Agile & The Lean Startup Movement
Risks of Agile 1.
Backlog items are not always validated against true enduser needs
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Critical reliance on a fallible Product Owner
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Lack of clear advice on how and when to “pivot”
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IT bias… fall back on what we know: build, build, build 5
Lean Startup Movement – A Brief History Steve Blank coined “customer discovery” in the book “Four Steps to the Epiphany” Steve funded Eric Ries’s startup company IMVU in 2004
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In 2010, Alex Osterwalder wrote “Business Model Generation” In 2011, Eric wrote “The Lean Startup”
Lean Discovery + Agile Delivery Illustrated
D ISCOVERY
Holis'c Discovery
Risk-‐driven Product Backlog
Exploratory Sprints
Data-‐driven Sprint Review
List Market, Customer, Product risks
Priori'ze by riskiest assump'on
Team intercepts users
Review experiment results
Illustrate business model/case
Include valida'on mechanisms
Team helps design experiments
Valida'ng Product Increment Measure key usage paJerns
Pivot, Persevere, Punt Scan for new opportuni'es
Focus MVP on early adopters
Holistic Discovery Assessing key customers, problems & markets Holis'c Discovery List Market, Customer, Product risks Illustrate business model/case
Risk-‐driven Product Backlog
Exploratory Sprints
Data-‐driven Sprint Review
Valida'ng Product Increment
Itera've Risk Management Product Risk
Customer Risk
Market Risk
• Are we solving a substantial problem? • What are our technical challenges?
• Who are our ideal customers? • Do we understand their needs?
• Do we have a viable market niche? • Are we better than the competition? 9
Problem Interview Talk with early adopters to learn whether they share your perception of the problem. This is a sample interview script to validate & rank problems with users.
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Thanks to Ash Maurya, author of Running Lean for this format: http://www.runningleanhq.com/
Test Your Riskiest AssumpBon We are envisioning a monthly studio panel of users and experts discussing prioritized topics related to Lean and Agile methods. Our Riskiest Assumption… People will pay ~$50/month for content that is often available for free, if the quality and delivery channels are sufficiently appealing.
Would you?
Discovering Customer Needs [In]validate your assumptions by: • Interviewing users • Observing users in their native environments • Manually simulating your system (“concierge”) • Rapid usability testing • Tracking behavior of customer cohorts (related groups) 12
Validation Board for Experimentation Plan and track experiments to test your assumptions about customers, problems & solutions. Pivot based upon the results that you see.
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hJps://www.leanstartupmachine.com/valida'onboard/
Adjusting the Plan Based on what you learn, you might: • Stick to the plan • Target another customer group • Target a different need • Expand or contract feature focus • Change platforms or architecture • Change channels • Kill the idea entirely
Persevere, pivot or punt. 14
Lean Canvas to draS your Business Model Draft your business case in a simple, single-page format, and adjust based upon the results of your interviews, prototypes and releases.
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Thanks to Ash Maurya, Leanstack.com
Example Lean Canvas for Sensei
Sensei is an Agile retrospecBve tool by LitheSpeed. www.senseitool.com
Risk-Driven Product Backlog Challenging & testing your assumptions Holis'c Discovery
Risk-‐driven Product Backlog Priori'ze by riskiest assump'on Include valida'on mechanisms
Exploratory Sprints
Data-‐driven Sprint Review
Valida'ng Product Increment
The MVP A “Minimum Viable Product” might be: • • •
Learning: Onsite observation, fake menus, ads Pitching: Preorders, comparisons, joint design Experiencing: Concierge, prototypes Later releases focus on scaling.
Early releases focus on quickly & cheaply testing ideas. 18
Unbounce for Landing Pages You can create dynamic landing pages that help you tune your pitch and garner pre-orders with tools like Unbounce.
Plan Releases & Pivots with a Story Map Epic 1 MVP Pivot Key DifferenBators
A2
Flexibility & Safety
A3
Scaling & OpBmizaBon
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Story A1
Epic 2
Key Ac'vity
B1
Major Component
D1 C1 C2 C3
B2
D1 D2
B3
Exploratory Sprints Quick, cheap ways to validate your approach Holis'c Discovery
Risk-‐driven Product Backlog
Exploratory Sprints Team intercepts users Team helps design experiments
Data-‐driven Sprint Review
Valida'ng Product Increment
Concierge to Test without Coding A manual simulation of your product or service.
Balsamiq Mockups for Low-‐Fi Prototyping Test layouts and flows without coding or graphic design.
hJp://balsamiq.com/products/mockups/
Data-Driven Sprint Review Using data to drive decisions Holis'c Discovery
Risk-‐driven Product Backlog
Exploratory Sprints
Data-‐driven Sprint Review Review experiment results Pivot, Persevere, Punt Scan for new opportuni'es
Valida'ng Product Increment
Lean Canvas as Dynamic Dashboard Think of your project as a set of small experiments. The results of these experiments should be simply stated and reviewed regularly to guide decisions about product direc'on.
Thanks to Ash Maurya, author of Running Lean: hJp://www.runningleanhq.com/
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“Pirate” Metrics & Customer Funnels AcquisiBon
AcBvaBon
How many users are interested and find you? Preorders, signups, ad responses How is their experience when they do? Successful runs through key use case
RetenBon
Revenue
Do they stick around for the long run? 30, 60, 90 day retention by cohort Do they pay? Ratio of paying users or ROI
Referral
Do they tell their friends? Successful recommendations
Thanks to Dave McClure http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-long-version
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Tes'ng the Pitch We originally interviewed 9 people, and 8/9 (89%) said they were very interested, but that they would greatly prefer a corporate plan to personal investment.
How well did you predict your peers’ opinions?
Validating Product Increment Analyzing & evolving your production system Holis'c Discovery
Risk-‐driven Product Backlog
Exploratory Sprints
Data-‐driven Sprint Review
Valida'ng Product Increment Measure key usage paJerns Focus MVP on early adopters
Quan'ta've A/B & MulBvariate TesBng Split (A/B) testing randomly presents users with competing versions of specific application pages and features. • See what works best by running parallel experiments • Choose the winning option after appropriate time
Header Sign up form
Demo movie
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Header Story Demo movie
Sign up form
Story
58% of visitors signed up
35% of visitors signed up
A/B Tes'ng Sensei with OpBmizely We found a 60% increase in registraBons just from adding the term “distributed teams” to our landing page.
Zopim Live Chat We envisioned live chat to be largely a help tool, but it ended up connecBng us with our most passionate early adopters.
Thank You!
AddiBonal Learning Opportuni'es •
Lean Startup in the Enterprise Meetup
Monthly at LitheSpeed office in Herndon, VA •
Lean Startup Machine
Travels nationwide •
Lean Startup Conference
Annually in San Francisco •
Lean + Agile Practitioner’s Forum
Coming soon!
Reading List – Lean & Agile Innova'on • • • • • • • •
Running Lean – Maurya Essential Scrum – Rubin The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development – Vlaskovits The Lean Startup – Ries Discover to Deliver – Gottesdiener The Other Side of Innovation – Govindarajan Four Steps to the Ephiphany – Blank Business Model Generation – Osterwalder
Contact Us for Further Information Arlen Bankston Managing Partner, LitheSpeed
[email protected] On the Web: http://www.lithespeed.com http://www.sanjivaugustine.com "I only wish I had read this book when I started my career in software product management, or even better yet, when I was given my first project to manage. In addition to providing an excellent handbook for managing with agile software development methodologies, Managing Agile Projects offers a guide to more effective project management in many business settings." John P. Barnes, former Vice President of Product Management at Emergis, Inc.
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