Product strategy in a customer centric company at LeanKit

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Product Strategy in a customer-centric company

Florent de Gantes, Atlanta Scrum User Group, 9/28/2016

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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

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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 DeliverCustomer 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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2. Focus on flow

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3. Limit work in progress (WIP)


(2)

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4. Continuous improvement


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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


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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?

DSDMNope

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1950s-1980s 1980s 1990s 2000s Today

TOC

Just-In-Time

Kanban

Lean(Manufacturing)

Lean IT(SAFe & ITSM)

Lean Engineering

ToyotaProduction

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

BoardJul 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 FridayMemorial

Day July 4th Labor DayThanksgiving

ChristmasNew Years

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Agenda

1. This guy

2. This company


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 stepTake 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


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A3 team has dual roadmap input

WhatWho When

Tribal Leaders Product Managers

Executive Team

Council MembersCustomer Success

SalesDemand Gen

Product MarketingDocumentation

Support

Discuss Roadmap

assumptions

Product design, personas, feature use

cases

Commercialization & Edition plans

Every Other Week1 hour meeting

Every Other SweepTriage feedback from

customers

Every Other SweepAlign on longer term thinking & 6-month roadmap themes


Tribal Council owns the roadmap

WhatWho When

Discuss Road Map

Departmental Policies

Tribal Leaders PD Execs

Council MembersProduct Managers

UX Leads

Technical Managers in their role as Delivery

Leads

Mon - WedStand-up to surface

delivery issues

ThuFull meeting to resolve

issues


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WhatWho When

Discuss Technical standards

AT-AT Roadmap

Develop A3’s for additional

sustainability investments

Chairmen CTO & CIO

MembersTechnical Managers in their role as Architects

TueWorking session

ThuReport back to Tribal

Council

Architect. Committee owns techDecentralize Control

Delivery: autonomous Work Cells

Career Management

Hiring

Training

Standards

Mentoring

SquadDelivery

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


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Squad Rooms = conversationsDecentralize 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 timeKey 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 strategicTake an Economic View

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A3s evolve as we learn moreFramework 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 mottoReduce Batch Size

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MVP drives better product outcomesReduce Batch Size

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An example from real lifeReduce 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

BoardJul 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 FridayMemorial

Day July 4th Labor DayThanksgiving

ChristmasNew 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


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Each sweep has its own cadence

Week 0 Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 5Week 4

PullPlanning

Hackathon

or

SquadDrivenWork

A3 A3 A3A3


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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


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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


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Understand and Exploit variabilityLeave 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 WorkUnderstand 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


4. How we deliver on our product strategy

5. That company

@iterativeleaps

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

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leankit.com/learn

• Articles

• E-books

• Webinars

• Templates

• Case Studies

Key Reading Online

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leankit.com/learn

• Articles

• E-books

• Webinars

• Templates

• Case Studies

Key ReadingKanban: 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

Product strategy in a customer centric company at LeanKit

Business

Transcript of Product strategy in a customer centric company at LeanKit