The Build TrapMelissa Perri
@lissijean #LAScot16
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Everyone’s doing the SAFety Dance
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What is all this shit?
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Copier Printer Scanner Fax Stapler Magician Satan
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@lissijean#leanUX15
We keep adding to the backlog and never take away.
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“We need to train our Product Owners”
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What is all this shit?
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The Build Trap
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@lissijean@lissijean
How did we get here?
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Agile processes don’t have a brain.
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“Scrum doesn’t focus on delivering just any increment of business value; it focuses
on delivering the highest priority business value as defined by the customer
(Product Owner).”
The Product Owner
Agile Project Management with Scrum
Ken Schwaber, 2004
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Agile is not enough. We need more…
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We need Product Management
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We treat Product Strategy as a plan.
PROBLEM
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Ingredients and recipes shipped
to your door.
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What is your product strategy?
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“I want a document with every field you intend to put on the site and the content strategy
so I can build a back end.”
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Most Product Strategies
are wish lists of features.
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Most Roadmaps are gantt charts.
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Creating new products is full of uncertainty.
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Product strategy
emerges from experimentation.
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Product Strategy is a system, made up of visions, goals, constraints, and where we are now that results in desired business and customer outcomes.
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UNIFIED FIELD THEORY Bill Costantino & Mike Rother
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@lissijean@lissijean
@lissijean@lissijean
@lissijean
What is your product strategy?
@lissijean
Ingredients and recipes shipped
to your door.
5 years FDS a top dinner option for the target market.
double acquisition Dec 2016
@lissijean
Product leaders provide vision, goals, and guardrails.
@lissijean
@lissijean
“The price is too high, we should lower it.”
“The photos are not enticing.”
“We need to rebrand the sign up funnel to the new design.” “We should be offering
sign up gifts.”
“They cannot try it for free!”
@lissijean
Increase conversion rate
by X%
5 years FDS a top dinner option for the target market.
double acquisition Dec 2016
increase conversion rate across all platforms by X% by end of Q2.
conversion rate is Y% on desktop and X% on mobile.
@lissijean
Company Goal,
Product KPI, Future state.
What are users
doing now?
What’s the first
little goal?
User Research, Product
Experiments
Product Kata
1 2 3 4
Planning Experimenting
A scientific, systematic way to build better products.
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Obstacle: We don’t understand why
people are leaving.
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@lissijean
Learned: The top reasons people are leaving.
@lissijean
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
ReasonCan't Find Menu What's in the box? The price is too high I want more plan options I am vegan
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Obstacle: People cannot find the menu.
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@lissijean
FAQS HELPFDS
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FDS FDS
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LEARNING reduces uncertainty.
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EXPERIMENTING IS THE
NEW BLACK
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@lissijean
If users engage with the site more, then they will contribute more to their savings.
HYPOTHESIS
Pop ups that lead users to savings growth calculators.
Success = clicking
TEST
Jim, Exec Mgr for Business Line
Great, let’s build these three features.
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Experiment Theater
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I want a refund.
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Measuring success on outputs.
PROBLEM
Jim, Exec Mgr for Business Line
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We build and launch with no measures of
success.
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Outcomes over
Output
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Jeff Patton
60%Valley of MehAwful Awesome!
SUCCESS OF PRODUCTS
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Jeff Patton
60%Valley of MehFailure Success
SUCCESS FOR BIG COMPANIES
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Jeff Patton
Failure Success
SUCCESS FOR STARTUPS
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Lack of focus on the real customer.
PROBLEM
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Problem
Customers don’t have custom dashboards.
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Problem
Customers don’t have custom dashboards.
Solution
Custom dashboards.
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Customers’ problems
are not lack of your product’s features.
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Customers’ problems
are not YOUR PROBLEMS.
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“As a user I want to engage with the site
but it’s boring.”
YOU ARE BIASED.
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TALK TO YOUR USERS. DIRECTLY.
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Jeff Patton & Giff Constable
Co
nfi
den
ce
Investment
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Jeff Patton & Giff Constable
Co
nfi
den
ce
Investment
@lissijean
Your colleagues are not your customers. (unless you are building internal tools)
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We built a mobile app before and it was successful last time.
But, Melissa, users don’t know what they want.
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Solving big problems for customers creates
big value for businesses.
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DISCOVERY
DELIVERY
How did we get here?
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We built a mobile app before and it was successful last time.
They just don’t understand Agile.
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We built a mobile app before and it was successful last time.
Do we even need Product Owners?
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We need product people who know how to make
valuable software by recognizing uncertainty.
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Agile is not enough to get out of the Build Trap.
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What are you going to do about it?
Melissa Perri [email protected]
produxlabs.com melissaperri.com
@lissijean
Melissa Perri CEO, ProdUX Labs [email protected]
melissaperri.com
produxlabs.com
@lissijean