Presented at Agile Singapore 2014 http://agilesg2014.sched.org/event/fc83ddab31b35de5041dedf4ebc72492 Product Development today has various challenges where startups and enterprises alike have to move quicker and plan resources carefully for consumers (users) to be able to gain market traction and stay relevant with competitors constantly evolving. Very often, product releases are managed by product managers gathering requirements on behalf of the customer within an organisation. He begins with a high-level product requirement and speaks with various stakeholders like sales, marketing, operations, finance to map business constraints and heads over to engineering to start building. This skips over valuable insights gained by engaging users, design teams and answering the hard questions of “nice to haves” vs “must haves”. I’ll like to share an approach that was used in two environments with success to bring products to market with a focus on users while considering business conditions and constraints. As a product owner in an enterprise setting tasked with crafting a mobile strategy and product roadmap or a product owner in a startup tasked with overhauling a legacy system for a more efficient business platform, I’ll compare the two distinct environments and offer insights into how a team can begin to understand and shape a company’s direction towards user-centered design. It involves thinking with users in mind, building with agile techniques and measuring to help iterate towards meaningful product releases. Often, this results in changes to an organisation that also requires coaching and charting a path for the people who are affected. The topic would be of interest to designers, developers, team leads, product managers, business executives or startup founders who recognises change is a huge part of business and that products that are able to create the most value for end-users are those that will gain customer loyalty in the long term.

1. User Centered
Agile Product Development
in an Enterprise & a Startup
Presented on 12th Nov 2014
Agile Singapore 2014
Michael Ong @michaelon9

2. @michaelon9
• 1999 - Freelance Web Design / Development
leading to web hosting for SMEs
• 2002 - Research & Development -
A Robust Rule-based Event
Management System for Call Data Records
- Société Générale
• 2003 - Network Engineer
- NEC Solutions
• 2004 - Full-Stack development
- Palm & Windows Mobile
- K.C. Dat, Nippon Express, Air Asia , Singapore
Zoo, Jurong Birdpark, Changi Airport Terminal 1
& 2, M1, Mapletree ...
• 2005-2007 - Business Process Consulting
- VISA International
- Robert Bosch SEA
• 2008 - Took a break in EVE Online
- Internet Spaceships is serious business
• 2009 - Portal Development
- ST701, SPH, Online Classifieds
• 2010 - Scrum Master
- iProperty Singapore
• 2012 - Mobile & UX Lead
- iProperty Group
(Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong & Indonesia)
• 2013 - Senior Product Manager
2014 - Chief Operating Officer
- bellabox Australia & Singapore

3. who is in your
team?
designers
developers
qa
marketing
sales
operations
customers service
finance

4. Credit : https://medium.com/@tyahma/how-to-hire-product-people-aab926e077c8

6. think - make - check

7. understand your
environment

8. who are your customers?

9. understand customers

11. user personas
to be tested

12. who are your stakeholders?

13. designers
developers
qa
marketing
sales
operations
customers service
finance
understanding
stakeholders

14. understanding
Organisational key concerns
- Communication?
- IT responsiveness?
- bad Customer Service?

15. how are you delivering projects?

16. workshops to understand internal
concerns / stakeholders / customers
• Introduction to User Experience design
• identify stakeholders concerns
• iProperty
• 4 workshops across group (120+ people involved in
product, design, development, marketing, sales)
• bellabox
• 2 workshops across teams (30+ people involved in
product, design, development, customer service,
operations)

17. workshops to understand internal
concerns / stakeholders / customers
• Customer Experience Journey & Design
Thinking
• identify key customer journey points
• Senior Level Strategy Workshop
• Identify key business concerns and drive
towards roadmap aligning stakeholders /
customer needs

18. activity (10 min)
individually
list down 5 key concerns you
have in your area of work /
business
as a team
group them into similar &
different items
present

19. sharing time!
similarities
differences

20. setting up a Product Roadmap
• Understand your environment
• Talk to your stakeholders, your customers, your internal users
• Understand pain points
• Is there a way new or existing services can improve
current processes?
• Look at your data (analytics) - what is being used in your
organisation / users
• Communicating the roadmap

21. think - make - check

22. communicate
your ideas

23. story #1
iProperty Group (Real Estate Portal)
10 years old (there for 3.5)
100+ to 300+ staff
4 main countries (MY, SG, ID, HK)
connects real estate agents / agencies / developers
to a few million property buyers & sellers

24. 4 workshops
6 months
4 countries
120+ team members
focused on “user experience” as
a topic
to identify where,how and who
we would start with
“in-house” approach with mobile
team with its own budget acting
like a vendor co-located within
the company

25. setting up the roadmap
& focus on delivery

26. Case Study
Developing property search apps
(Blackberry, Android & iPhone)
for Indonesia

27. the process
• mobile roadmap
• design strategy
• personas & scenarios
• information architecture
• task flows
• prototyping & testing
• development
• marketing launch & measuring

28. design strategy

29. product requirements
& analysis
Product Survey in Dec 2012
51 Respondents on Mobile Site v1
53% of respondents used the mobile site every day
Reasons for not using Mobile
• Search results often not found and takes longer time to
load
• Less information in listing detail on mobile site
• Photos are not presented well on mobile site
Top 5 Features on Mobile users wanted to see
• User Login to access favorites (shortlists) and
property search across mobile and web
• Mortgage Calculator
• Compare Properties by budget and timeline
• Shortlist Properties
• Instant updates to homes and searches saved

30. user scenarios
Usability Test Scenario - 1
You are planning to buy a property in Indonesia.
Your work location is in Jakarta and you intend to buy
a House in Jakarta Pusat area that would be
convenient for you to commute to office and back
home.
Your budget ranges from 500,000,000 -
1,000,000,000 IDR . You want to check out on the right
property that meets your needs and then contact the
Agent for further process
Usability Test Scenario - 2
You have browsed through few properties when you
were in a restaurant for Lunch and even shortlisted a
few.
You close the site and then reopen rumah123 in the
night after you get back home in the evening.
You wanted to continue your property search.

31. information architecture

32. task flow analysis

33. user interface flow

34. test early & often

35. prototyping for iPhone

37. prototyping for Blackberry

38. beta testing

39. testing for Blackberry

40. summary of pain &
pleasure points - old design

41. summary of pain &
pleasure points - new design

42. usability evaluation -
new design

43. usability evaluation -
new design

44. marketing

45. marketing

46. key learnings
• Train the trainer
• I was trained at Republic Polytechnic during first workshop and
with their assistance proceeded to carry out the rest of workshops
to 120+ people
• Identify your successors and provide mentorship / training asap!
• Team leads took over Scrum teams after 1st year when I move to
Product Owner position in new team
• New team Lead took over team when I moved on
• Individuals in our teams have mostly moved to team lead positions
at 4 years after we introduced Agile/Scrum techniques

47. key learnings
• Communicate early and often
• Work with Marketing early to identify launch plans / bottlenecks
• Work with Customer Service / Sales early to train on product
• You can be Agile in a Enterprise, act like a Startup
• Understand your budget, control it
• Deliver results fast and measure
• After Mobile team rolled out apps for iPad, Windows, iPhone, Android across 3
countries in 9 month period, Mobile API is now used by Desktop sites
• Keep your team small (we had 5)
• Product Owner, UX/UI Designer, Back-end Dev, 2 Mobile Devs
• 6 apps in 9 months across 3 countries we operated in

48. activity (10 min)
individually
list down 5 immediate items you
would like to test on your project
as a team
group them into similar &
different items
present

49. sharing time!
similarities
differences

50. story #2
bellabox (Beauty Discovery Service)
3 years old (there last 1+)
20 to 35 staff
2 countries
connects 700+ brands
to a 100k+ audience
45k paying customers

51. 2 workshops
15 days
2 countries
20+ team members
focused on “user experience” as
a topic
to identify where,how and who
we would start with
hybrid approach with design,
development
PO co-located at their office
80-90% of time

52. Case Study
Re-design of 2 year old business processes and
architecture as we grew from 8k+ to 45k customers
within a year
our question :
how do we support even more customers
and be lean?

53. the process
• design strategy
• product requirements and
analysis
• product roadmap
• information architecture
• task flows
• prototyping & testing
• development
• marketing launch & measuring

54. design strategy

55. product requirements
& analysis
• Product Design
• Epic Planning and Prioritisation
• Understanding user research done by
bellabox team
• Competitor Analysis (Functional and Visual)
• Discuss Brand Strategy
• Technical
• Initial System Analysis on v1
• Migration Planning (Data and Settings)
• Setup Test Environments for Drupal
• Operations
• Prototype new box allocation and payment
check flow for AU Women

56. setting up the roadmap
& focus on delivery
S P R I N T
( 2 W E E K S ) 1
1 1 T H N O V
2 0 1 3
2
2 5 T H N O V
2 0 1 3
3
9 T H D E C
2 0 1 3
4
2 3 R D D E C
2 0 1 3
X M A S /
N E W Y E A R
5
6 T H J A N
2 0 1 4
6
2 0 T H J A N
2 0 1 4
D R A F T
7
3 R D F E B
2 0 1 4
D R A F T
8
1 7 T H F E B
2 0 1 4
D R A F T
9
3 R D M A R
2 0 1 4
B E TA O P T I N
1 0
1 7 T H M A R
2 0 1 4
D R A F T
1 1
3 1 S T M A R
2 0 1 4
P R O D U C T
D E S I G N
M I K E ,
C H A R M A I N E ,
S H E L D O N
Z AV I E R
M I C H A E L
R E S E A R C H
A N A LY S I S
E P I C P L A N N I N G
R E S E A R C H
A N A LY S I S
S T O RY
P R I O R I T I S AT I O N
I N F O R M AT I O N
A R C H I T E C T U R E
TA S K F L O W S
TA S K F L O W S
P R O T O T Y P E S
TA S K F L O W S
W I R E F R A M E S
V I S U A L D E S I G N
W I R E F R A M E S
V I S U A L D E S I G N
W I R E F R A M E S
V I S U A L D E S I G N
F R O N T- E N D
W I R E F R A M E S
V I S U A L D E S I G N
F R O N T- E N D
T E S T I N G
F R O N T- E N D Q A
V 2 . 1 D E S I G N V 2 . 1 D E S I G N
T E C H
A LV I N , A L E X
RYA N , A L I F
M I C H A E L
I N I T I A L S Y S T E M
A N A LY S I S
A R C H I T E C T U R E
M I G R AT I O N
PAY M E N T 1 . 5
O R D E R 1 . 5
M I G R AT I O N
PAY M E N T 1 . 5
O R D E R 1 . 5
M I G R AT I O N
PAY M E N T 1 . 5
O R D E R 1 . 5
F E E D B A C K 1 . 5
M O B I L E M A I L S
1 . 5
M I G R AT I O N
P L A N N I N G
I N V E N T O RY
S U B S C R I P T I O N
S T O R E
B R A N D
M A N A G E M E N T
O R D E R S
A L L O C AT I O N
M U LT I - C O U N T RY
PAY M E N T 2 . 0
M I G R AT I O N
S H I P P I N G
P R O F I L E S
P R O M O T I O N S
F E E D B A C K 2 . 0
C S 2 . 0
A R T I C L E S
R E WA R D S
N O T I F I C AT I O N S
A N A LY S I S
R E P O R T I N G
T E S T I N G ,
I T E R AT I N G
T E S T I N G ,
I T E R AT I N G
PA R C E L
T R A C K I N G
D A S H B O A R D S
T E S T I N G ,
I T E R AT I N G
O P E R AT I O N S
E M I LY, S A R A H ,
J A S M I N E ,
AT I Q A H , K AY L A
A L E X A N D R E ,
M A R I O N ,
E M I LY V.
A L E X , M I C H A E L
A L L O C AT I O N 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
PAY M E N T 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
A L L O C AT I O N 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
PAY M E N T 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
A L L O C AT I O N 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
PAY M E N T 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
PAY M E N T 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
F E E D B A C K 1 . 5
D E C B O X
S I N G A P O R E
A L L O C AT I O N 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
PAY M E N T 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
C U S T O M E R
S E R V I C E 1 . 5 -
I N T E R C O M . I O
S I N G A P O R E
A L L O C AT I O N 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
PAY M E N T 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
F E E D B A C K 1 . 5
J A N B O X
S I N G A P O R E
A U S T R A L I A
A N A LY T I C S 1 . 5
A L L O C AT I O N 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
PAY M E N T 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
A N A LY T I C S 1 . 5
A L L O C AT I O N 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
PAY M E N T 1 . 5
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
F E E D B A C K 1 . 5
F E B B O X
S I N G A P O R E
A U S T R A L I A
C U S T O M E R
S E R V I C E 2 . 0
I N T E R C O M . I O
A U S T R A L I A
A L L O C AT I O N 2 . 0
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
PAY M E N T 2 . 0
A U S T R A L I A
S I N G A P O R E
A L L
A N A LY T I C S 2 . 0
A L L O C AT I O N 2 . 0
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
PAY M E N T 2 . 0
A U S T R A L I A
S I N G A P O R E
A L L
F E E D B A C K 2 . 0
M A R B O X
S I N G A P O R E
A U S T R A L I A
A N A LY T I C S 2 . 0
A L L O C AT I O N 2 . 0
A U S T R A L I A
W O M E N
PAY M E N T 2 . 0
A U S T R A L I A
S I N G A P O R E
A L L
A N A LY T I C S 2 . 0
M A R K E T I N G
E M I LY, S A R A H ,
S T E P H A N I E ,
B I Y I N G , L A U R E N ,
B E C K S
A L B E R T
G O T O M A R K E T
P L A N N I N G
M I G R AT E
A C Q U I S I T I O N
T R A C K I N G -
G O O G L E TA G
M A N A G E R
M I G R AT E
A C Q U I S I T I O N
T R A C K I N G -
G O O G L E TA G
M A N A G E R
A L P H A S I T E
S N E A K P E A K
B E TA O P T I N
- V O L U N T E E R
- I N V I T E S
L I V E I N V I T E S

57. user scenarios
Scenario 1 (Example)
Description in the form of a job story from
the perspective of the user: When you ___,
you want to ___, so you can ___.
When you have a Bellabox subscription, you
want to check your dashboard, so you can
keep up with the status of your boxes, pending
orders, and anything that needs my attention.
User Tasks
These are the tasks you want the user to be
able to complete.
• Check the status of your next box
• Check the status of your pending orders

58. information architecture

59. task flow analysis

60. user interface flow

61. test early & often

62. prototyping
for Mobile

64. beta launch -> Live

65. key learnings
• Business as usual while over-hauling a business is
incredibly tough work
• We have had key project team members leave due
to the hectic nature of running a business and
creating a new platform
• Maintain focus on customer needs
• Don’t be distracted by growth. You are at critical
juncture where lack of focus can delay project plans
significantly

66. key learnings
• Hybrid model kinda works
• Lean In-house dev team
• Combined with Heavy out-sourced Design & Dev team
• Looking back, we would move towards in-house sooner rather
than later after majority of work is completed BUT hiring is tough
(for everyone)
• Learn from Enterprise
• Be great at documentation, process design
• Identify bottlenecks early and work on removing obstacles

67. think - make - check

68. measuring velocity

69. measuring performance

70. metrics checklist
credit : luxr.co

71. metrics checklist
credit : luxr.co

72. think - make - check

73. think about
Direction = Vision + Strategy
Direction = Vision + Strategy
And for the company to be
successful it needs to be
capable to pursue that direction.
Success = Direction x
Capability
Capability has two main
drivers...
Capability = Competence x
Capacity
Competence is how good we are at
doing something and it's driven by 4
main factors;
Competence = Communication x
Skills x Experience x Information
Capacity however is how fast we are
at doing it and it's driven by how
many resources we have (money,
people, assets) and how productive
or efficient we are with those
resources.
Capacity = Resources x Efficiency
credit : http://dcnorris.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/algebra-what-is-role-af-coo.html

74. • Organisational health
• Talent
• Inventory
• Feedback Loops
• Processes
• Procedures
• Controls
• Systems
• Planning
• Reporting
• and Troubleshooting
think about
Direction = Vision + Strategy

75. when you get back
to your office …
Examine
• 5 problems you listed
• 5 tests you would like to
conduct
Get started!

76. don’t have the right team yet?
here are some great books to read

77. tools you can use
• Primarily use Google Docs
• Draw is great for task flow diagrams
• I favor BPMN
• We also use diagramming tools like Cacoo
• For prototyping
• Paper, Sketch, Mockflow, Balsamiq, Mockflow, Fireworks, Photoshop works depending on
your team
• For sharing visual designs and collaboration
• Google Draw, Invision
• For usability testing
• Silverback or Moray
• For Mobile Usability testing, setting up a rig for camera is quite easy.

78. don’t be afraid
to fail

79. thank you
@michaelon9
see you around at
Agile SG #agilesg
UXSG #uxsg
ProductCamp SG #pcampsg