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2 Days, 40 People, and a Bus: TLC + LSM at SFAgile 2012

by tlclabs on Jun 08, 2012

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Lean Startup Machine was conceived to help entrepreneurs validate or invalidate their product ideas in an intense, no-holds-barred bootcamp atmosphere. But Jabe and Simon thought it might serve a ...

Lean Startup Machine was conceived to help entrepreneurs validate or invalidate their product ideas in an intense, no-holds-barred bootcamp atmosphere. But Jabe and Simon thought it might serve a second purpose: to jump-start the staff at TLC into thinking about their work differently, bringing coworkers together, and perhaps spurring creativity in (and out of) the office. So earlier this year, Simon, Jabe and 40 TLC employees piled onto a bus chartered for Washington, DC. They had a handful of ideas they thought had some potential. But they had no idea what they were really getting into.

TLC + LSM was an immensely rewarding -- and, at times, extremely challenging -- experience for everyone who was involved. We believe that this two-day workshop significantly changed the way we do business. Last Friday, Simon gave a talk at SFAgile to discuss the uses of Lean Startup within a corporate culture.

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2 Days, 40 People, and a Bus: TLC + LSM at SFAgile 2012 Presentation Transcript

Simon Marcus@lycaonmarcus

Lean Startup was part of our effort to turn TLC into a learningorganization.Learning Organization: A group of people working together to collectively enhance their capacities to create results they really care about. - Peter SengeQualities of a learning organization:• Help people forge meaningful relationships with coworkers• Support the development of individual skills• Create a culture that productively surfaces challenges• Ensure employees care about a company’s common vision• Encourage learning in every corner of the company

About Our Company:TLC is a 40-year-old firm that makes software forlibraries.- Started in the 1970s, it was the first data company to productize digital bibliographic records for libraries.- Built first-ever Windows-based library management systemBut by the mid-2000s…- Market was RFP-driven, and it was difficult to find new space for innovation in the slow-to-change industry- The ‘Innovator’s Dilemma’ was in full effect

First Steps Towards Innovation:- Jumped head-first into a Scrum implementation- Adopted practices including pairing, TDD, continuous integration and deploying.- Released software frequently, in small batchesEventually, we...- Reduced costs, increased sales and revenue- Started releasing software built in collaboration with customersWhen Scrum stopped being as useful, we transitioned topersonal and team Kanban.

Using Lean and Kanban, teams reduced their standard workload by asmuch as 75%.By early 2012, our business was running very well.

With business stable, we decided to see if wecould push our employees to the next level.Our (hopeful) solution: Lean Startup Machine.Lean Startup Machine is an intensive lean/agilebootcamp designed for entrepreneurs. But wedecided to make our employees the first groupever to attend a LSM event as a corporate team.

The TLC offices are located in West Virginia – not exactly a bustling metropolis – so we opted to take a field trip to DC for our LSM experience. Main challenge pre-event: getting TLC employees to come up with ideas they would be passionate about. But, because we knew many ideas would change or be eliminated altogether during the LSM process, they had to be concepts they could survive the death of.© David Gaines/Flickr

We created a three-day ideation process:- Designed to generate a large number of ideas in a very short time- Wanted to maximize likelihood that people would see things they liked in each others ideas- Core of approach: people with different experiences would come up with different problems that needed solving.What followed was an approach that created ahailstorm of sticky notes that represented people,problems and environments.

What followed was an approach that created ahailstorm of sticky notes that represented people, problems and environments.

Three-Day LSM Ideation Process at TLC:- Limited to iPhone and iPad apps- Asked each employee about their current favorite app; what made them love the app so much?- Broke down elements of each app into elements – people, actions, environments, themes.- Components were then reordered using affinity diagrams, archetype extraction, and empathy maps.- Took our archetypes and created new products to solve the problems we imagined they had.

Using this pitch process, we came up with around 12 ideas;from these, we voted on the most promising and decided on 12 to take to the Lean Startup Machine event.

So, at 6:00 in the morning, 40 TLC employees piled on a bus headed to DC for their first experience with LSM. Along the way, they built landing pages, surveys, socialmedia handles and other tools to prepare them for the day.

Once we were there, Trevor Owens – who cofounded LSM – talked to ourteam for just a few minutes. The next thing we knew…

It was time to walk-the-walk and get out of the building(GOOB). This is what LSM is all about. Go out into the world, talk to real people, find out what they think of your idea.

At the end of the action-packed day, many peopleseemed exhausted – they were totally wiped out.

Day TwoTeams spent the morning looking for more validation –then narrowed their focus or pivoted as a result.By afternoon, everyone was preparing their pitchpresentations.During the pitch, each team would have five minutesto make the case for their idea.

In the end, the winning teams were an app that helpedgardeners visualize their plans and a piece of hardware – basically a hackable Sonos box.

At the end of Day Two, we held an intense meetingcalled the ‘Just In Time’ retrospective.We talked about…- Value of street validation vs. validation online- Emotions that came with ‘getting out of the building’- Parts of the validation process some people liked, and some didn’t like

So…What Happened Next?

We went back to work… but things were different.- Language of LSM now permeates our day-to-day- Lean concepts we’d been trying to integrate suddenly gained better traction- LSM seems to serve as a “gateway drug” to deeper, more advanced lean concepts - Why? Lean Startup “makes failure legit” – gives people license to make mistakes, and teaches them to fail well.

But by far the most tangible result of LSM is the formation of TLC Labs.What the Labs aren’t:- A skunk-works style lab, closed off to most of the employeesWhat the Labs are:- A way to teach about Lean Management and Enterprise Startup principles.- A place where employees can work collaboratively on experimental ideas- A sort of neverending Lean Startup experience

We have two Lean Startup projects running in our lab right now:The first, eBiblioFile, is a service that delivers digitalbibliographic records to libraries when they placeorders with ebook vendors.- Saw a place for entry in a wide-open market – instead of taking months to bring product to consumers, identified “Earlyvangelist” clients to create a solution within days- Started booking revenue in under a month- Following Steve Blanks’ principle of not adding more features until we can’t get any more customers as-is.

Here’s what eBiblioFilelooks like…

The second project is called Boundless. It helps libraries make better use of Social Media to build relationships with their communities.

But by far, the most concrete component of TLC labs is this“endless LSM.” That means…- Pitch meetings every two weeks, with everyone invited- Anyone can pitch any idea they want – regardless of industry, platform or market- Pitches are met with votes- If an idea is voted through, employees get a development team and can “quit” their day job for two weeks to form an MVP.

Here’s a kanban board showing where all of the current ideas are moving through the process.

We are using Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas, Ash Maurya’s Lean Canvas, andLSM’s Validation Canvas to help us figure out our hypotheses and track our progress. See example of each on the next three slides…

Source: http://www.ashmaurya.com/2012/02/why-lean-canvas/

Project Name: Team Leader Name: Validation Canvas Track Pivots Start Pivot 1 Pivot 2 Pivot 3 Pivot 4 Customer Hypothesis Problem Hypothesis Solution Hypothesis Design & Analyze Experiments Track Pivots Invalidated Validated 1 2 1 2 Riskiest Assumption 3 4 3 4 Core Assumptions MVP Stage 5 6 5 6 Minimum Success Criterionwww.leanstartupmachine.com This work is licensed under the Cr eative Commons Attribution-Shar e Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://cr eativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Cr eative Commons, 171 Second Str eet, Suite 300, San Francisco, Califor nia, 94105, USA

There are known knowns; there arethings we know we know.We also know there are knownunknowns; that is to say we knowthere are some things we do not know.But there are also unknown unknowns –there are things we do not know wedont know.- Donald Rumsfeld

Agile + Lean + Lean Startup?After years of teaching people that quality is more importantthan speed, we are entering a domain where speed is the criticalfactor.- There is an inherent tension hereHowever, the Lean world is changing – trending towardsexploring the “why” of their work.Goal: To find the middle ground between the two workprocesses, and benefit from them both.

Was LSM a success for TLC?- Without a question, I would do it again in a heartbeat – and most people at TLC would likely answer the same.- LSM had a profound and immediate effect on the business at TLC- A “safe to fail” experience mixed with real- world risk- An experience that boosted morale, bringing members of the team together.

Startups operate under acondition of extreme uncertainty - Eric RiesDon’t we all - Simon Marcus

Anonymous Feedback: http://sayat.me/simonmarcusSimon Marcus@lycaonmarcus

Onno Makor, Internet consultant | creative consultant | project manager | graphic facilitator at onnomakor.nl This is a great presentation and a great inspiration. It glues together three canvas tools into a coherent lean process. Well done and thnx for sharing! 7 months ago

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