This is a digital product ferry tale, without the ferry tale. 100% Transparency. This is how we built digital products. No bullshit. Product Building at it's best.

1. Inside Digital Product Development
How we built Talentpioneer

2. Sebastian Borggrewe
• CEO, Productsquads
• Techie by Trade, Product Developer by
Heart
• 15+ years professional digital product
development experience
• As Developer
• As Product Manager
• As CTO

3. Goals of this talk
• You will learn
• what Talentpioneer is
• how digital products are build today
(no bullshit, no ferry tales) and what
methodology is state of the art
• how you as a customer are ideally
integrated into the process of
digital product creation
• how digital teams really work
(remote edition)
How we built Talentpioneer

4. Video Talentpioneer
Video missing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsTec6_uOZk

5. Project Summary
• Technologies
• App (Android)
• Backoffice application (Firebase)
8 weeks
Time taken Teamsize
How we built Talentpioneer
4

6. Productsquads
Founded: 2018
Location: Munich
Core Competence: Development of
complex digital products & product
teams
Products: Customer Facing

7. CTO-as-a-service
• We become the products/companies CTO
• The CTO comes within a Productsquad consisting of
• Designers
• Developers
• Data Scientists
• …
Productsquads Family
(Invite-Only Expert
Network)
Core Competency
Software Development &
Design
Productsquads
Core Competency
Product- & Projectmanagement

8. Productsquad Talentpioneer
Sebastian
CTO
Carlos
Designer
Liza
Android Engineer
Artur
Android Engineer
How we built Talentpioneer

9. Productsquad Talentpioneer
How we built Talentpioneer
This is the Client

10. How we built Talentpioneer
How we did it
Ideation Implementation Validation

11. How we built Talentpioneer
Ideation1
The reason that you do
ideation, is to find out what you
need to build in order to achieve
your goals.

12. Ideation
• During Ideation we find out
• what we want to achieve
• how we can achieve it
• It usually starts with an idea or a problem
• At the beginning we usually do not know
whether it is an app, a chatbot, a website, a
blockchain… yet
Story Mapping
Methodolody Time taken
How we built Talentpioneer
4-6 hours

13. Story Mapping
What do we want to achieve?
How we built Talentpioneer
Goal
Activity How can we achieve it?
Story
Subtask
Development Ready Tasks
Technical Subtasks
STRATEGICTEAMLEVEL

14. How we built Talentpioneer
Implementation2
In order to nail implementation,
you need a great team & a
transparent process so you
don’t waste any time or money.

15. Great Team
How we built Talentpioneer

16. 100% Transparent
How we built Talentpioneer

17. Implementation
Paper
Prototyping
Methodology Time taken
How we built Talentpioneer
1 day
• Prototypes are a great way of
testing assumptions &
validating them.
• Why are we doing this?
• takes little time
• generates huge insight
• easy to throw away!

18. Paper Prototype
How we built Talentpioneer
Done with Marvelhttps://marvelapp.com/4c571b3

19. How we built Talentpioneer
Validation3
The reason that you do
validation, is that you want to
make sure that you are actually
building the right thing.

20. Testing the Product
How we built Talentpioneer
• Test with colleagues, friends and, most
important, the customer early, even if it is
just a power point slide or a paper
prototype
• Early feedback =
• early learnings =
• less money 🔥 =
• more 💰 earned

21. Validation
User
Interviews
Methodology Time taken
How we built Talentpioneer
1 weekend
• We showed it to
customers and let them
use the prototype
• customers = kids < 13
that play football

22. Learnings
• When you are 13, you do not have
an email address
• you most likely have a
smartphone, which is an Android
phone (technology identified)
• We cannot test the tests, if we do
not build them somehow
How we built Talentpioneer

23. The End
• And then magically the final
product appeared…
• Well, noo. So we continued with 1..
How we built Talentpioneer

24. How we built Talentpioneer
Ideation1
We cannot test the tests, if we do not build
them somehow!
=> Small interaction prototype for the pass test

25. The Pass Test
How we built Talentpioneer

26. Implementation
Interaction
Prototyping
Methodology Time taken
How we built Talentpioneer
1 day
• Interaction prototypes
can be hacked (coded)
or build with prototyping
tools
• i.e. Framer, Principle,
Powerpoint

27. How we built Talentpioneer
Validation3
https://youtu.be/0o2q4t0BmpQ

28. Learnings
• The hardest test, could be
executed.
• The UI is not 100% perfect yet,
but…
• Done is better than perfect.
How we built Talentpioneer

29. How we built Talentpioneer
So this does not happen just once?
Ideation Implementation Validation
💡 $ 💰💯

30. How we built Talentpioneer
Waterfall…
Ideation
Implementation
Validation
💡
$
💰💯

31. How we built Talentpioneer
Agile
Ideation
Implementation
Validation

32. How we built Talentpioneer
Build-Measure-Learn
Learn
Build
Measure
Ideas
Data
Product

33. How we built Talentpioneer
In order to nail implementation,
you need a great team & a
transparent process so you
don’t waste any time or money.

34. Great Team
How we built Talentpioneer

35. How do you get here?
How we built Talentpioneer

36. How do you get here?
How we built Talentpioneer
Prototyping
2 weeks
Technical Implementation
6 weeks

37. Great Team
How we built Talentpioneer

38. Technical Implementation
• Scrum is an agile methodology that
helps teams to iterate on problems
and focus on one step at a time
Scrum
Methodology Time taken
How we built Talentpioneer
6 x 1 week
Technology
Kotlin,
Node.js

39. How we build Talentpioneer
One Week in a Squad
Monday
Planning
Wednesday
Refinement
Friday
Demo +
Retrospective
Tuesday
Focus Work Time
Thursday
Focus Work Time
1 Iteration or Sprint

40. Monday: Planning
• We plan what we want to work on this week
• We identify how many Tasks we can get done within the week.
• We commit to a goal that we want to achieve this week

41. Tuesday: 100% Focus for all developers
• Quick Update in the morning (Daily) => What did we work on yesterday, what
will we work on today
• Getting things done
How we built Talentpioneer

42. Wednesday: Refinement
• Daily
• Refinement
• We get together to talk about the
next tasks
• We look at them and identify missing
information, design
• We estimate how long they will take

43. Thursday: 100% Focus for all developers
• Daily
• Getting things done

44. Friday: Demo
• The Team shows what they achieved this week
• Great touchpoint with Talentpioneer to gather feedback
• Direct feedback to the teams is important to always have a common
understanding of the product (customer + team)

45. Friday: Demo

48. Friday: Retrospective
• The Team identifies what went well this week and what can be improved.
• This is a crucial mechanism to ensure quality & speed
• Small problems become big problems, if you talk about them to late

49. Friday: Retrospective

50. How we built Talentpioneer
Validation3
After every week we talk to
customers again and validate
our current implementation
state

51. How we built Talentpioneer
Build-Measure-Learn
Learn
Build
Measure
Ideas
Data
Product

52. How we build Talentpioneer
One Week in a Squad
Monday
Planning
Wednesday
Refinement
Friday
Demo +
Retrospective
Tuesday
Focus Work Time
Thursday
Focus Work Time
1 Iteration or Sprint

53. How we build Talentpioneer
Why can we not simply do this:
Ideation
Implementation
Validation
💡
$
💰💯

54. How we built Talentpioneer

55. Key Takeaways
• Talk to your users. Test Test Test!
• Always be involved in the development process
• You know your business best
• Make your development process as transparent as possible for everyone
• Share results early with all Stakeholders
• DON’T DO WATERFALL. DO SMALL ITERATIONS. 1-2 weeks
How we built Talentpioneer

56. Questions? Get in touch
Sebastian Borggrewe
Founder & CEO
+49 17624873783
sebastian.borggrewe@
productsquads.com
Mehr Informationen:
www.productsquads.com
Productsquads GmbH
Erika-Mann-Straße 11
80636 München