Unlocking the formula for sustainable digital product excellence.

Jess Ross & Lauren Argenta Wilson Fletcher ANZ

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“ Innovation remains a frustrating pursuit. Failure rates are high and even successful companies can’t sustain their performance.

“The root cause is that companies fall into the trap of adopting whatever best practices are in vogue or aping the exemplar innovation of the moment.”

Gary P Pisano, Harvard Business Review, June 2015

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Unlocking the formula for sustainable digital product excellence is the defining challenge of our age.

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Many organisations are aggressively integrating digital and design capability into their business.

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Naturally, all these models have positives and negatives. In more advanced markets such as the US and the UK, many large established organisations are already on their third or fourth cycle, having still not found one that works for them…

SINGLE INTERNAL DIGITAL DESIGN TEAM

EXTERNAL INNOVATION LAB

INTERNAL DISRUPTION TEAM

DISTRIBUTED DIGITAL RESOURCE

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WHY IS IT SO HARD?

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“ Innovation remains a frustrating pursuit. Failure rates are high and even successful companies can’t sustain their performance.

“The root cause is that companies fall into the trap of adopting whatever best practices are in vogue or aping the exemplar innovation of the moment.”

Gary P Pisano, Harvard Business Review, June 2015

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Our current model for achieving digital innovation is Silicon Valley. It’s start-ups. It makes sense, these guys are living the dream. And they’re what many established organisations fear. They’re the disruptors.

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But the agendas, challenges, risks and aims of start-ups and established organisations are dramatically different. So why are we looking to the working practices adopted by start-ups to provide the answers for established organisations? There is a fundamentally broken logic here.

Established orgs Start-upsORGANISATIONAL TRAITS

Volume of productsScaleReputationHeritage/legacyDigital leadership skillsMARKET CONTEXT

Disruptive threatsCommercial riskCustomer expectationsTrend fragility

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Start-ups are the product of innovation, not the engine.

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$1BN $120M$970M

Before it even launched

And their marker of success is how much you can be sold for, not how much money they make; because a lot of them don’t make any money at all.

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Agile Delivery FrameworkLEARNINCEPTION

(PLANNING)DISCOVERYINVESTMENT

THEMES

ANALYTICS

KPI’s

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

DELIVERY

SPRINT BACKLOG

SPRINT BACKLOG

1-4 WEEK SPRINTS1-4 WEEK

SPRINTS1-4 WEEK SPRINTS1-4 WEEK

SPRINTS

DAILY STAND

UPS

FINISHED WORK

BUSINESS STRATEGY

BUSINESS

PORTFOLIO PLANNING AND OPTIMISATION

STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT

UX EXPLORATION: • Problem framing • Ideation • Personas • Concepts • User journeys • Content strategy

PRODUCT BACKLOG

SPRINT PLANNING

DEFINE THE PROJECT TEAM:

• Product owner • UX lead • BA • Delivery

Yet this is the model that many established organisations adopt to deliver digital products into market. The focus is often solely on delivery, which unfortunately ends up in the exclusion of the product itself.

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NEVER COMPROMISE PRODUCT QUALITY

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The importance of the interface

How experience design feels to

businesses

How experience design feels to

customers

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Minimum product

DELIGHTFUL

USABLE

VALUABLE

FEASIBLE

Minimum viable product

What is released

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TIP 1: MAKE YOUR VISION TANGIBLE.

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We need a step change

Our product is dying and in need

of reinvention

We need something new

These are the moments of greatest risk in the product lifecycle. They are the times at which it makes sense to bring in specialists, and to explore and validate all assumptions with customers.

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To understand the scope of the new opportunity, you need to take the time to explore what the new customer experience could or should be. Once you do this, you can pull together a more robust business case or reduce losses before you invest too much.

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TIP 2: DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE VALUE OF A GREAT PRODUCT MANAGER

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Customer Business

Market trendsYour product

manager

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PRODUCT

MANAGERS

I

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TIP 3: EXPERIMENT BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

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Start ups are often quoted as pushing a fail fast agenda; get it out and learn in market. We acknowledge that you won’t always know what you need to do, and you will need to experiment in order to get that right, but in our opinion established organisations need to do it behind closed doors.

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Start-up MVP

DELIGHTFUL

USABLE

VALUABLE

FEASIBLE

Established org MVP

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SO IN SHORT…

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Don’t focus on delivery to the

exclusion of the product

Always make your vision

tangible

Arm your process with product managers as

guides

Experiment often but always

behind closed doors

Fund exploration to really

understand your POC before you business case

Don’t design an MP. Design a

vision and then release an MVP

In short…

Thank you@wilsonfletcher

#WFtalks

www.wilsonfletcher.com