Product strategy in a customer centric company - how LeanKit thinks about Lean, how we organize to deliver on our product strategy, and where Google can improve. Delivered at Scrum User Group, in Atlanta.

1. @iterativeleaps
Product Strategy in a customer-centric company
Florent de Gantes, Atlanta Scrum User Group, 9/28/2016

2. @iterativeleaps
Words of wisdom
“Figuring out the right product is the
innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.”
Ben Horowitz, the Hard Thing about Hard Things

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Agenda
1. This guy
2. This company
3. How LeanKit thinks about Lean
4. How LeanKit delivers on product strategy
5. That company

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Who am I?
● Born
● Grew up
● Ski
● Soccer
● Amstrad CPC-6128
● TI-92

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Who am I?
● CS/EE major
● Je ne sais quoi
● Born
● Grew up
● Ski
● Soccer
● Amstrad CPC-6128
● TI-92

6. @iterativeleaps
Who am I?
● Masters, IT &
Mobile
● Fly Fishing
● Scotch Tasting
Society
● Corporate
Strategy
● Met my (now) wife
● Management Consultant
● Worked in Russia,
Switzerland, Belgium,
Netherlands, Ukraine, …

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Who am I?
got an MBA, got into tech, married Caroline
Product Manager on Ads platforms, became dad to Robert
VP Product Strategy, became dad to Alice

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Agenda
1. This guy
2. This company

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Who we are
“A leader in Lean for business and the only enterprise Lean-based process and work
management software provider”
Gartner Technology Research, 2016
Enable Teams to Deliver
Customer Value, Faster

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Our customers

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What we do
• Visual Work Management
• Enable Multi-Level Collaboration
• Anytime, Anywhere
Enable teams to deliver customer value, faster

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Visual work management: getting started
1. Visualize work

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Visual work management: getting started
2. Focus on flow

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3. Limit work in progress (WIP)
Visual work management: getting started
(2)

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4. Continuous improvement
Visual work management: getting started

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• We’re experts in the “new” Lean – Lean for business.
• We build software that harnesses the innate preference for
consuming visual information.
• Offices in Franklin, TN and London, UK
• 150 employees at last guesstimate
LeanKit
Create harmonious business flow across an enterprise.

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Agenda
1. This guy
2. This company
3. How LeanKit thinks about Lean

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Change is a given
We can’t control it
Prepare for bad
Embrace good
Water-fail
Laundry List
Gold plate
Slap Together
Blamestorm

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Many people you
meet will have a
narrow software
development
centric view of
modern
management ideas
Agile
Scrum
XP
LeanKanban?
DSDM
Nope

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1950s-1980s 1980s 1990s 2000s Today
TOC
Just-In-Time
Kanban
Lean
(Manufacturing)
Lean IT
(SAFe & ITSM)
Lean
Engineering
Toyota
Production
System
Six Sigma
TQM
Agile
XP
Scrum
Lean
Construction
Lean (Startup)
Enterprise
DevOpsUnderstanding shared heritage
broadens learning and eases
communication

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Lean ideas are
seemingly common
sense
But they conflict with
typical corporate
accounting & HR
practices
Simple,
Not easy
Measure to Manage
Focus on rapid flow of value & fast feedback
loops vs up-front planning & high utilization
of all resources
Motivation
Belief in the intrinsic motivation of clear
purpose vs extrinsic motivation driven by
rewards & punishment

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Lean principles map to Agile
best practices – and enable
them at scale

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Cadence is crucial to working Lean
1 2 3 4 65
Jan 4
All Hands
Annual
Kickoff
Board
Jan 27
Feb 15 May 9 June 20
All Hands
Mid-Year
Party
Board
Jul 29
Aug 1Mar 28
All
Leaders
Board
Apr 22
7
Sep 12
All
Leaders
Board
Oct 21
8
Oct 24
Long sweep to
allow for
holidays
MLK
Birthday
Good Friday
Memorial
Day
July 4th Labor Day
Thanksgiving
Christmas
New Years

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Agenda
1. This guy
2. This company
3. How LeanKit thinks about Lean
4. How we deliver on our product strategy

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Our product mission
“Make work visualization and process improvement
delightful to create habits that empower happy people to
deliver value faster to their customers”
Florent de Gantes, 5 min before this presentation, riffing on Margaret Thatcher

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Driving strategy with each little step
Take an
Economic View
Actively
Manage
Queues
Understand and
Exploit
Variability
Cadence and
Synchronization
Decentralize
Control
Reduce Batch
Sizes
Source: Don Reinertsen, Principles of Product Development Flow

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Balance three product directions
A3 team Tribal Council
Architecture
Committee
Decentralize
Control

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A3 team has dual roadmap input
WhatWho When
Tribal Leaders
Product Managers
Executive Team
Council Members
Customer Success
Sales
Demand Gen
Product Marketing
Documentation
Support
Discuss
Roadmap
assumptions
Product design,
personas, feature use
cases
Commercialization &
Edition plans
Every Other Week
1 hour meeting
Every Other Sweep
Triage feedback from
customers
Every Other Sweep
Align on longer term
thinking & 6-month
roadmap themes
Decentralize
Control

29. Tribal Council owns the roadmap
WhatWho When
Discuss
Road Map
Departmental Policies
Tribal Leaders
PD Execs
Council Members
Product Managers
UX Leads
Technical Managers in
their role as Delivery
Leads
Mon - Wed
Stand-up to surface
delivery issues
Thu
Full meeting to resolve
issues
Decentralize
Control

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WhatWho When
Discuss
Technical standards
AT-AT Roadmap
Develop A3’s for
additional
sustainability
investments
Chairmen
CTO & CIO
Members
Technical Managers in
their role as Architects
Tue
Working session
Thu
Report back to Tribal
Council
Architect. Committee owns tech
Decentralize
Control

31. Delivery: autonomous Work Cells
Career Management
Hiring
Training
Standards
Mentoring
Squad
Delivery
Goal is 7 +/- 2 members
Has skills for 80% of work -
X-Functional or Service Center
Member can belong to only 1 squad
Located together (physically or virtually)
Work assigned to the squad not squad
members
Guild
Decentralize
Control

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Squad Rooms = conversations
Decentralize
Control

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Cost of delay - when relevant
• We will use Cost of Delay when (information value > information cost)
• Information value is high when:
– a queue of competing projects is formed (i.e. there’s a bottleneck)
– the projects’ business outcomes are not directly comparable
– realistic assumptions can help estimate the business outcomes
• Information cost is low when
– *some* estimate can be made quickly
– a bank of existing metrics is available, and people learn to DIY
– experts are easily identified and accessible
Take an
Economic
View

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Value created Value captured
Key metrics
Definition
Value of
modeling
Usage metrics (e.g., time to perform
tasks / jobs)
Economic value of solving the
problem for all relevant users
Easier to test for, fewer
assumptions, shorter lead time
Key assumptions comparable
across projects (opportunity cost of
users’ time, capture rate)
Operational metrics: # of seats, ARPU,
costs, etc
Leankit operating profit
Translates better to actual money in the
bank (as long as assumptions are
correct)
Cost of Delay can be strategic
Take an
Economic
View

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A3s evolve as we learn more
Framework for LeanKit A3 - documents are handwritten, drafted then rewritten numerous times
PROBLEM STATEMENT CONSTRAINTS
What problems are we trying to solve for customers and users
(either internal or external)?
What should Design Studio consider in designing a solution?
How does the current model work for non-target users?
TARGET USERS NEW USER EXPERIENCE
Which personas will benefit? What “job” are they “hiring”
LeanKit to do? What Edition will we target?
How will the interface (web, mobile, API) and user workflow
change?
COST OF DELAY VALIDATION & MEASUREMENT PLAN
What is the opportunity cost to users if we don’t solve this next
sweep? When do we declare success?
How do we make sure we solved the problem?
Product Feedback process = the problem A3 planning process = the solution
Actively
Manage
Queues
Find a copy of our A3 template here

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FSGD - our development motto
Reduce
Batch Size

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MVP drives better product outcomes
Reduce
Batch Size

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An example from real life
Reduce
Batch Size
• Wright Brothers = bicycle makers
• First prototype - small glides in
sand
• Pulled by one Wright brother,
running & pulling a rope
• Outer Banks, NC: chosen
because of strong winds

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SWEEPS - Aligning Cadence to Calendar
1 2 3 4 65
Jan 4
All Hands
Annual
Kickoff
Board
Jan 27
Feb 15 May 9 June 20
All Hands
Mid-Year
Party
Board
Jul 29
Aug 1Mar 28
All
Leaders
Board
Apr 22
7
Sep 12
All
Leaders
Board
Oct 21
8
Oct 24
Long sweep to
allow for
holidays
MLK
Birthday
Good Friday
Memorial
Day
July 4th Labor Day
Thanksgiving
Christmas
New Years
Cadence and
Synchronize

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Structured learning loop
Sequenced A3s
solving problems
“Next up”: most
valuable &
feasible A3
Specific A3 in
production
Themes of
problems
Design Studio:
twice a sweep
User Testing:
2+ times a sweep
Product feedback Intervals:
once a sweep
User Group:
once a sweep
A3 Meeting:
3 times a sweep
Cadence and
Synchronize

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Each sweep has its own cadence
Week 0 Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 5Week 4
Pull
Planning
Hackathon
or
Squad
Driven
Work
A3 A3 A3A3
Cadence and
Synchronize

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From A3 to Working Software
Draft Scan & attach
to roadmap
card
Hang original
on big wall
Link card to
other product
documents
Use to develop
DIV’s
Cadence and
Synchronize

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Demonstrating Progress, often
• Review Roadmap to level set
• Demonstrate completed work by team
• Report results against two metrics:
– # deployments to production
– % squads demo’ing completed product
• Covers both marketability & sustainability
results
• Discuss with revenue teammates transition
plans for their phase of delivering the
product to customers
Cadence and
Synchronize

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Understand
and Exploit
variability
Leave slack in the system

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• Valuable small product ideas that are not
on roadmap
• Requires squad consensus
• Does not require A3 or roadmap approval
• Can be:
– Sustainability
– UX improvements
– Research for A3 submissions
• Executed by squads, but multi-squad
collaboration projects are allowed
Squad Driven Work
Understand
and Exploit
variability

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Hackathons
• 1st week of every 4th sweep
• Participants can be remote
• Self-organizing teams (recommended 7 max)
• No need for cost of delay analysis
• Appropriate things to hack on:
– Experiments
– Low hanging fruit
– Research
• NOT for starting big projects
Understand
and Exploit
variability

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Agenda
1. This guy
2. This company
3. How LeanKit thinks about Lean
4. How we deliver on our product strategy
5. That company

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Could Google get any better?
• Google = Lean??
• Good:
– OKR: Objectives & Key Results
– “in God we trust, all others bring data”
• Bad:
– Heavily coupled vs microservices
– Technology centric vs Customer
Centric
– “Perf” vs individual Scorecards

49. @iterativeleaps
leankit.com/learn
• Articles
• E-books
• Webinars
• Templates
• Case Studies
Key Reading Online

50. @iterativeleaps
leankit.com/learn
• Articles
• E-books
• Webinars
• Templates
• Case Studies
Key Reading
Kanban: Successful evolutionary change for your technology
business
- David J. Anderson
Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life
- Jim Benson, Tonianne DeMaria Barry
Real-World Kanban: Do Less, Accomplish More with Lean Thinking
- Mattias Skarin
Lean from the Trenches: Managing Large-Scale Projects with Kanban
- Henrik Kniberg
Principles of Product Development Flow
- Don Reinertsen
Winning with Data
- Tomas Tungusz
Online

51. www.leankit.com
@iterativeleaps
©2016 LeanKit Inc.