Global Product Lifecycle

Creating A Lean Enterprise

@LeanPLC@craigstrong

● Approx 44,000 employees worldwide

● Institutional sales & print background

● The world’s largest publisher and education company

● Operates in over 80+ countries

● Growth through acquisition

● 170 years old

Learner At The Centre

The World Has Changed

Investment StrategiesHigh Probability

Low Probability

Low Impact

Large Organisations

High Impact

Start Ups

Jeremy Hope, 2003. Beyond Budgeting: How Managers Can Break Free from the Annual Performance Trap. Edition. Harvard Business Review Press.

Traditional Models Are ChangingBig Bang Market Adoption

Roger’s Market Segments

Uncertainty—in the economy, society, politics—has become so great as to render futile, if not counterproductive, the kind of planning most companies

still practice: forecasting based on probabilities

“

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Enterprise Structures

Big Ideas & Big Bets

X X

Projects vs Products

WAGILE

Finance HR Legal Agile Framework Marketing Sales

Software

Self Perpetuating Risk

BigPlans

BigBudgets

BigSystems

HighRisk

Command & Control Behaviours

Cost Of Change is High

ConstrainsInnovation

Increased Management Overhead

Traditional Governance Reduces The Capability to Innovate

New Ideas

Products

Long time to marketBottleneck of ideas

Strategic force field which limits ideas internally

Global Product LifecyclePLC

A Nonlinear Process

Learn Build

Measure

Search and Execution are different

Product Age Young Mature

Status Before Market-Fit After Market-Fit

Focus Searching for a Business Model Executing Against Business Models

Duration Days Weeks Months <1 Year Years

MetricsCustomer Discovery, Innovation Accounting, Lean Analytics, Pirate Metrics Revenues, Profit-Margins, ROI, ARR, NPV

The PLC Framework

Product Governance (1 of 2)

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ProductCouncil

ProductCouncil

Idea Explore Validate

Can you identify a core user

problem in a target market?

Have you validated

customer and learner needs in

context?

Can you demonstrate

Product/Market Fit or validated

business model?

PortfolioCouncil

PortfolioCouncil

PortfolioCouncil

Product Governance (2 of 2)

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Validate

ProductCouncil

Grow Sustain

ProductCouncil

ProductCouncil

Retire

How fast are you growing the

business at scale? Are you continuing

to deliver outcomes to a

broader user set?

Are you delivering

revenue and outcomes while reducing costs?

What residual value can be gleaned from the business?

Can you demonstrate

Product/Market Fit or validated

business model?

Reducing Risk

Funding & Evidence

Risk

Time

Idea Explore Validate Grow

Traditional Business case Template

Investment decisions are evidence based using consistent set of criteria: customer and learner, environment, finance,

tech and operations and more...PLC Governance

Criteria

Category 1Customer Value Proposition

Category 2Market Demand

Category 3Strategic Fit

Category 4Product Design & Efficacy

Category 5Financial Information

PLC Governance Criteria

PLC criteria addresses all of the questions in a business case as well as input from specialist areas from the business such as:

● Accessibility● Security● Quality● Efficacy

● Product Management● Operations● Safeguarding● Marketing & Brand

● Sales● Legal● Customer Experience● More

QuarterlyHypotheses

Product Metrics

£?Political Economic Social Technological Legal Environmental

Strategic Growth

Hypotheses

Political

Economic

Social

Technological

Legal

Environmental

Business Model Innovation

Small Bets BEFORE Product-Market Fit

Double Down With Larger Investments AFTER Product-Market Fit

Iterative Funding

http://blog.mercdev.com/mvp-when-less-is-more/

Not like this…

Like this…?

Visibility & Transparency

Bansi Nagji & Geoff Tuff

https://hbr.org/2012/05/managing-your-innovation-portfolio

Core ProductsThese are existing products that are

optimized for existing customers

Adjacent Products These represent incremental innovation

targeted at adjacent markets

Transformational Products

These represent breakthrough innovation in which the company

develops new products for new markets

20% of investments are in adjacent

innovation10% of investments

are in transformational

initiatives

70%

of investments are safe bets in core products

Product Lifecycle Principles More Ideas, More Bets, More Tests

New Ideas

Not all the ideas survive but all the learnings are recorded

All the ideas are quickly captured and tested

One to three months turnaround

Walls are pervious allowing ideas into and out of the company

Open Innovation

Behind The ScenesCulture - Coaching - Practices

Principles Over Process

“If you ask the right questions, you drive the right behaviours.”

http://leanuxtools.com/

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Tanzania

“Just thought you guys might like to know we're currently sat in the middle of rural Tanzania answering your questions from the Idea & Explore phases.

Your stuff is proving genuinely useful in terms of helping us shape our thinking/questioning.

We've proved and disproved a number of hypotheses, made some head scratching discoveries & had some eureka moments. We've pivoted already. It's been great.”

Agile Beyond Technology

Finance HR Legal Development Teams Marketing Sales

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AgileLean StartupLean UXBeyond BudgetingCustomer InterviewsMinimal Viable ExperimentsMVP’sLean AnalyticsEfficacyGrowth HackingHypothesesand More….

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Open Source Product Lifecycle Criteria V1.0

Learning about practice

Common extensions can be incorporated into later versions

Open Collaborative Learning Community

Product LifecycleCommunity

Specialist Lead has been identified

Slice is engaged with the lifecycle

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Today Tomorrow

DecentralizedNetwork

DistributedNetwork

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Product team has better access to all parts of the business

Product team has restricted access to other parts of the business which can hinder or slow progress

Thank You

Feedback & Questions

@leanplc@craigstrong