Driving Lean Innovation
in Agile Teams
Presented by Arlen Bankston
Arlen.Bankston@LitheSpeed.com
@abankston, @lithespeed
About Me
Arlen Bankston
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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
Agenda
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Sensei Story
Agile Blues, Lean Startup
Lean + Agile Innovation
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Holistic Discovery
Risk-Driven Product Backlog
Exploratory Sprints
Data-Driven Sprint Review
Lean & Agile at Established
Companies
“Life’s too short to
build something
nobody wants.”
Ash Maurya, Lean Entrpreneur, Author of
Running Lean.
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Sensei Story
http://www.senseitool.com
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First, an Idea!
A tool to facilitate Continuous Improvement via the Scrum Retrospective
Sensei is an Agile retrospective tool by LitheSpeed. www.senseitool.com
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Quickly built a prototype
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And, we took it on the road
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Everyone said this was the best thing since…
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And so…
Built, Built,
Built
Lost our
Team, Got
a New
Team
Built some
more
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Build and they will come?
Customer
Discovery
Feature
Development
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Agile Blues, Lean
Startup
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Risks of Agile
1.
Backlog items are not always validated
against true end-user needs
2.
Critical reliance on a fallible Product
Owner
3.
Lack of clear advice on how and when
to “pivot”
4.
IT bias… fall back on what we know:
build, build, build
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Now What?
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Solution crafted, few
customers
No ideas on how best to
proceed
Keep building?
But…we’re almost out of
runway!
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A Serendipitous Epiphany
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The Lean Startup Cycle: Build-Measure-Learn
• Know
your customer
• Start small
• Fail fast
• Test relentlessly
• Seek customer validation at
all levels
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Lean Discovery + Agile Delivery Illustrated
D ISCOVER
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Holistic
Discovery
Risk-driven Product
Backlog
Exploratory
Sprints
List Market,
Customer,
Product risks
Prioritize by
riskiest
assumption
Team intercepts
users
Illustrate
business
model/case
Include
validation
mechanisms
Team helps
design
experiments
Data-driven
Sprint Review
Review experiment
results
Validating
Product Increment
Measure key
usage patterns
Pivot, Persevere,
Punt
Scan for new
opportunities
Focus MVP on
early adopters
Holistic Discovery
Assessing key customers, problems & markets
Holistic
Discovery
List Market,
Customer,
Product risks
Illustrate
business
model/case
Risk-driven
Product Backlog
Exploratory
Sprints
Data-driven
Sprint Review
Validating
Product
Increment
Iterative 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?
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Test Your Riskiest Assumption
What critical assumptions would sink your business
case if untrue?
We assumed that most agile teams did (or
at least wanted to do) retrospectives.
Do your teams?
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)
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Parallel Collaborative Design & the Design Studio
Describe
Key Goals
& Context
Select
Designs to
Iterate
Steal Ideas
& Try Again
Sketch Designs
Independently
2-3
cycles
Design Studio Approach
Share
Designs
Benefits:
• Rapid idea generation & iteration
• Avoid missed opportunities
• Buy-in across team(s)
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Sensei Lean Startup
STREAM OF VALIDATED FEATURES
Lean
Feature Validation
& Elaboration
Agile
Feature Delivery
& Release
Invalidated
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Lean Canvas to draft 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
Risk-Driven Product Backlog
Challenging & testing your assumptions
Holistic
Discovery
Risk-driven
Product Backlog
Prioritize by
riskiest
assumption
Include
validation
mechanisms
Exploratory
Sprints
Data-driven
Sprint Review
Validating
Product
Increment
The MVP
A “Minimum Viable Product” might be:
Learning: Onsite observation, fake menus, ads
Pitching: Preorders, comparisons, joint design
Experiencing: Concierge, prototypes
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Later releases focus
on scaling.
Early releases focus on quickly &
cheaply testing ideas.
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Plan Releases & Pivots with a Story Map
Epic 1
MVP
Pivot Key
Differentiators
A2
Flexibility &
Safety
A3
Scaling &
Optimization
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Story A1
Epic 2
Key Activity
B1
D1
C1
C2
B2
Major
Component
C3
D1
D2
B3
Unbounce for Landing Pages
You can create dynamic landing pages that help you tune your pitch and
garner pre-orders with tools like Unbounce.
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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https://www.leanstartupmachine.com/validationboard/
Adjusting the Plan
Based on what you learn, you might:
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Stick to the plan
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Target another customer group
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Target a different need
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Expand or contract feature focus
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Change platforms or architecture
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Change channels
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Kill the idea entirely
Persevere, pivot or punt.
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Exploratory Sprints
Quick, cheap ways to validate your approach
Holistic
Discovery
Risk-driven
Product Backlog
Exploratory
Sprints
Team intercepts
users
Team helps
design
experiments
Data-driven
Sprint Review
Validating
Product
Increment
Concierge to Test without Coding
A manual simulation of your product or service.
Overcoming the fear of being “Salesy”
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Balsamiq Mockups for Low-Fi Prototyping
Test layouts and flows without coding or graphic design.
http://balsamiq.com/products/mockups/
Data-Driven Sprint Review
Using data to drive decisions
Holistic
Discovery
Risk-driven
Product
Backlog
Exploratory
Sprints
Data-driven
Sprint Review
Review experiment
results
Pivot, Persevere, Punt
Scan for new
opportunities
Validating
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 direction.
Thanks to Ash Maurya, author of Running Lean:
http://www.runningleanhq.com/
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“Pirate” Metrics & Customer Funnels
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Revenue
Referral
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
Do they stick around for the long run?
30, 60, 90 day retention by cohort
Do they pay?
Ratio of paying users or ROI
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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Validating Product Increment
Analyzing & evolving your production system
Holistic
Discovery
Risk-driven
Product Backlog
Exploratory
Sprints
Data-driven
Sprint Review
Validating
Product
Increment
Measure key
usage patterns
Focus MVP on
early adopters
Quantitative A/B & Multivariate Testing
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
Story
58% of visitors
signed up
A
B
Header
Story
Demo
movie
Sign up
form
35% of visitors
signed up
A/B Testing Sensei with Optimizely
We found a 60% increase in registrations 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
connecting us with our most passionate early adopters.
Watching users in action
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Lean & Agile at
Established Companies
Challenges to Innovation at Large Corporations
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Talent
Heavy Governance
Heavy duty consumer research processes
Decision culture centered around HIPPO (Highest Paid
Person’s Opinion)
Success measured as # of units
Culture that frowns upon pivots
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Lean for the Enterprise at Capital One*
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We hire only the best digital talent and then
massively empower them
We have designed new workplace environments
to spark innovation
We have retooled the way we do consumer
insights generation
We don’t create business cases first - We build
and test prototypes to create the business case
We build concierge based solutions before we
build the technology
We measure success as customer engagement
rather than unit production
*Gagan Kanjlia, Senior Vice President, Capital One Bank
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Thank You!
Reading List – Lean & Agile Innovation
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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
Executive Vice President
Arlen.Bankston@LitheSpeed.com
On the Web:
http://www.lithespeed.com
http://www.senseitool.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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