Crucial part of any business is constantly trying to stay relevant for the customers and provide better services that competitors. It’s important to not only generate ideas on how to achieve that, but also to test and validate those ideas. DevOps mindset is indispensable to achieve good business results with software development. But how exactly?

1. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Experiment and validate
business ideas
by Pavel Chunyayev
DevOps Showcase Amsterdam
25 January 2018, Mercure Hotel

2. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Innovation
• Innovation is at the core of every company’s operations
• Innovation is both hated and loved
• Engineers are afraid that failures will have impact on their appraisals
• Managers know how to work with business plans
• But business plans don’t help dealing with uncertainties
• You need to try, fail, learn from failure and develop you core competences
• It has never been easier (quicker, cheaper) to innovate in the current digital
world and technologies for rapid software development and delivery

3. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
About me
• Originally from Ukraine
• Last 3 years in NL
• Ik spreek graag Nederlands
• With Levi9 since 2010
• DevOps since 2011
• Currently - Business Technology Consultant
• MBA student at ABS, UvA, part time, 1st year

4. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
1. Hypothesis
2. Experiment
3. Repeat
Three easy steps to innovate

5. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
1. Hypothesis
2. Experiment
3. Repeat
Three easy steps to innovate

6. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 1: Hypothesis
• Comes from science – everything is a hypothesis and needs to be
checked – validated
• Every idea, feature of improvement should be treated as hypothesis –
something to be validated first.
There are two types of innovation to be expressed as hypothesis:
• Explore
• Exploit

7. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 1: Hypothesis - Explore
• Introduce new feature/service/business model
• Focus on customer experience, behavior, satisfaction
• Design thinking, design sprints, double diamond, etc.
• Startups are doing exactly this
• Lean enterprises with ’the missing function’ are focused on this type
of innovation as well

8. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 1: Hypothesis - Exploit
• Improve existing operations
• Change the process (and customer behavior)
• Increase efficiency (and make financial impact)
• Basis for Continuous improvements
• Assumptions
• Ill, blame, cure, consequence
• Why do we need a change?

9. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 1: Hypothesis – The change
• Fight the status quo
• It’s your burden to explain why the change is needed
• Dig to discover underlying assumptions and use them
• Use “Ill, blame, cure, consequence” model

10. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 1: Everything is a hypothesis
• Don’t forget about the metrics
• Ideal metrics are business metrics
• Ideal focus is on business value
• Each engineer is a part of business and needs to act accordingly

11. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
1. Hypothesis
2. Experiment
3. Repeat
Three easy steps to innovate

12. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 2: Experiment
• Idea is worth nothing, it’s implementation that matters
• Come up with experiment that will test the underlying assumptions
and generate valuable feedback
• You need a truly cross-functional, multi-disciplinary team
• Focus on an MVP instead of a Perfect product

13. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 2: Experiment - Metrics
• Measurements, metrics
• Are people working differently now? Are they using new process?
• Have we increased efficiency? Reduced costs?
• Is new feature/app/service used by the customers?
• Use actionable metrics instead of vanity metrics
• Focus on business value
• Focus on team’s impact

14. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
1. Hypothesis
2. Experiment
3. Repeat
Three easy steps to innovate

15. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 3: Repeat
• There are a lot of frameworks, methodologies or ideas that promote
working in cycles, iterations, loops.
• Scrum, OODA, PDCA, Build-Measure-Learn
• They have core structure in common:
• Understand the current situation and come up with an idea to try
• Execute an implementation (validation, test, experiment)
• Check results, decide what to do next and repeat the cycle
• Your work is never over
• Continuous Improvements or Continuous Experimentation

16. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
1. Hypothesis
2. Experiment
3. Repeat
Three easy steps to innovate

17. @PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Key Takeaways
• Innovation reduces the risk
• Innovation is not costly
• Come up with business ideas
• Validate them
• Repeat
•Innovate
+31 6 2117 5817
pavel@levi9.com