Lean+AgileDC 2014 Arlen Bankston

1. Lean Startup Tools for
Agile Product Teams
Lean+Agile DC, Feb. 11, 2014

2. 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
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3. Agenda
• Agile & The Lean Startup Movement
• Holistic Discovery
• Risk-driven Product Backlog
• Exploratory Sprints
• Data-driven Sprint Review
• Validating Product Increment
3

4. Agile & The Lean Startup
Movement

5. 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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6. 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
• In 2010, Alex Osterwalder
wrote “Business Model
Generation”
• In 2011, Eric wrote “The
Lean Startup”
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7. Lean Discovery + Agile Delivery Illustrated
Holistic
Discovery
List Market,
Customer,
Product risks
Illustrate
business
model/case
Risk-driven Product
Backlog
Prioritize by
riskiest
assumption
Include
validation
mechanisms
Exploratory
Sprints
Team
intercepts
users
Team helps
design
experiments
Data-driven
Sprint Review
Review experiment
results
Pivot, Persevere,
Punt
Scan for new
opportunities
Validating
Product Increment
Measure key
usage patterns
Focus MVP on
early adopters
DISCOVER
Y

8. 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

9. Iterative Risk Management
• Are we solving a substantial
problem?
• What are our technical challenges?
Product
Risk
• Who are our ideal
customers?
• Do we understand their
needs?
Customer Risk
• Do we have a
viable market
niche?
• Are we better than
the competition?
Market Risk
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10. 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.
10
Thanks to Ash Maurya, author of Running Lean for this format:
http://www.runningleanhq.com/

11. Test Your Riskiest Assumption
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?

12. Discovering Customer Needs
[In]validate your assumptions by:
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• Interviewing users
• Observing users in their
native environments
• Manually simulating your
system (“concierge”)
• Rapid usability testing
• Tracking behavior of
customer cohorts (related
groups)

13. Validation Board for Experimentation
13 https://www.leanstartupmachine.com/validationboard/
Plan and track experiments to test your assumptions about
customers, problems & solutions. Pivot based upon the results that
you see.

14. 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.
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15. Lean Canvas to draft your Business Model
Thanks to Ash Maurya, Leanstack.com15
Draft your business case in a simple, single-page format, and adjust
based upon the results of your interviews, prototypes and releases.

16. Example Lean Canvas for Sensei
Sensei is an Agile retrospective tool by LitheSpeed. www.senseitool.com

17. 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

18. The MVP
A “Minimum Viable Product” might be:
• Learning: Onsite observation, fake menus,
ads
• Pitching: Preorders, comparisons, joint
design
• Experiencing: Concierge, prototypes
Early releases focus on quickly
& cheaply testing ideas.
Later releases
focus on scaling.
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19. Unbounce for Landing Pages
You can create dynamic landing pages that help you tune your
pitch and garner pre-orders with tools like Unbounce.

20. MVP
Pivot Key
Differentiators
Flexibility &
Safety
Scaling &
Optimization
Story A1
A2
A3
B1
B2
C1
C2
C3
D1
D1
D2
B3
Epic 1 Epic 2
Key
Activity
Major
Component
Plan Releases & Pivots with a Story Map
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21. 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

22. Concierge to Test without Coding
A manual simulation of your product or service.

23. Balsamiq Mockups for Low-Fi Prototyping
http://balsamiq.com/products/mockups/
Test layouts and flows without coding or graphic design.

24. 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

25. Lean Canvas as Dynamic Dashboard
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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/

26. “Pirate” Metrics & Customer Funnels
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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

27. Testing 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?

28. 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

29. 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
Header
Sign up
form
Demo
movie
Story
58% of visitors
signed up
35% of visitors
signed up
A B

30. A/B Testing Sensei with Optimizely
We found a 60% increase in registrations just from adding the
term “distributed teams” to our landing page.

31. 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.

32. Thank You!

33. Additional Learning Opportunities
• 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!

34. Reading List – Lean & Agile Innovation
• 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

35. Contact Us for Further Information
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Arlen Bankston
Managing Partner,
LitheSpeed
Arlen.Bankston@lithespeed.com
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.