2. Your Speaker!
• Catherine Connor
– Rally Software
– Boulder, CO
– catherine@rallydev.com
• Roles
– Product Manager at Rally Software
– Product Owner at Rally Software
– Product Owner at Borland
– Requirements Evangelist at IBM Rational (RequisitePro)
– Sales Engineer at Rational
• Passion
– Providing customers with real solutions
– Helping product managers adopt Agile principles
– “How product management must change to enable the agile enterprise”
3. Experience Report!
• “Lean Startup” technique applied to enter the
Portfolio Management market (Aug’ 10 - Dec’11)
!
!
4. Rally a Startup?!
• Started in 2002
• Privately held
• 298 employees
• 136,000 users
• Distributed offices – US, Europe, Asia
• 58 of the largest technology companies!
• 20 of the largest finance companies!
• 15 of the largest telecom companies!
• Existing Market: Agile Program & Project Management
• New Market: Agile Portfolio Management
5. Customer Development (2004-2009)!
Customer Development is a technique startups use to quickly iterate and
test each part of their business model. !
!
How you execute Customer Development varies, depending on your type
of business.!
!
- Steve Blank!
7. Lean Startup (2011)!
Customer Development was a way to quickly search
outside the building for a profitable business model
when customer needs are unknown. !
!
An Agile Development model was the right match for
engineering to build a product
when the initial feature set was unknown. !
!
The sum of solving for both unknown customer
needs and unknown features
became the Lean Startup.!
21. What Worked!
• Discipline
– “The 4 steps to the Epiphany” cookbook
– Interview script focused on hypotheses validation
• Dedicated resources
– Non-entrepreneurial resources
– No borrowing of existing development resources
• Product-Market fit
– 3 customer testimonials on launch day
• Earlyvangelists
– Few right ones more important than many
22. Ah Ha Moment!
“Dropping releases that require
configuration changes in our
production environment is not an
acceptable way for releases to hit our
enterprise working environment. ”
23. Earlyvangelist Detector!
• Low availability
• Assigned to participate by manager
• Focus on usability and performance instead of suitability
• Need constant hand-holding to use MVP
NOT AN
EARLYVANGELIST
24. What We Could Have Done Better!
1. Discard non-earlyvangelists quicker
2. Clearer internal communication
3. Include UX person in interviews
4. Earlyvangelists’ expectations at launch
5. Less documentation for MVP
26. Resources!
• The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steveblank.com
– Teaching Customer Development and the Lean Startup –
Topological Homeomorphism!
• Theleanstartup.com – Eric Ries
– The Lean Startup: Interview with Eric Ries
• Escape Velocity – Geoffrey Moore
– Audio Podcast: Reach your escape velocity – Standford University eCorner
• Rally’s experience – Agile Blog
– Blog: The Lean Startup & Customer Development – How It’s Moving Through Rally!
– Blog: Give people the gift of meaningful work, while investing in your company’s future!
– Videos: http://www.rallydev.com/toolkits/agile-portfolio-management-toolkit