Product innovation is not about coming up with more ideas. It's about creating an environment where it is safe to fail - both quickly and cheaply. In this talk, Ed will share stories of leaders who have successfully created these environments, common obstacles that get in our way and a some simple techniques we can try to overcome these obstacles. These include how to de-stigmatize failure by celebrating it, how to have difficult conversations with your peers, and how to make testing ideas cheap and safe with continuous delivery, customer interviews and prototype testing.

1. Innovation is a Habit:
Creating an amazing
engineering culture.
Ed Kraay
@ekraay

2. Management’s job is not
to prevent risk but to build
the capability to recover
when failures occur. It
must be safe to tell the
truth. - Ed Catmull,
President of Pixar
Photo by Web Summit - http://flic.kr/p/AGDbh9

3. Make it safe to fail

4. You’ll never lack
engineers who want to
work with you.

5. 1. Psych Safety
2. Tech Safety
3. Product Safety

6. “If you’re not making
mistakes, you’re not
trying hard enough”
Philip Ljubicich

7. Photo by nigham - http://flic.kr/p/4r6HgN
Psychological Safety:
a sense of confidence
that the team will not
embarrass, reject or
punish someone for
speaking up
A. Everyone gets a
chance to talk
B. Teams sense when
things get crucial
www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-
its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html?_r=0

8. Try: At your staff meeting - Go
around the room, share
highlights and lowlights from
the week. Make it personal.
Learned from Paul Yiu

9. (Leadership trick. Go
first.)

10. Try: Bring up success and share
mistakes in your team all hands.
http://tomtunguz.com/a-dog-and-a-monkey/

11. Problem: Silence does
not equal consent
Photo by jsdilag - http://flic.kr/p/dNXKyL

12. Scenario
You’re having a meeting about the a technical
solution for a problem.
Architect - “Since we all agree that option A is
correct, then we can move on to choose X and Y.“
You know that the senior engineer doesn’t agree
with option A, but hasn’t told the architect so.
What do you do?

13. Try: Test for agreement
I have
serious
objections
Great idea, I
probably
thought of it
myself.
I can live
with and
support the
team.
I have one or
two
questions
that I need
answered
Good idea. I
like it.
(This is not about getting consensus. It’s about getting more data)

14. Try: Team
Retrospectives with
Brain Writing on Stickies

15. 2. Tech Safety

16. “Making undo really easy
makes for an awesome
engineering culture.” Brett
Taylor, former CTO Facebook

17. Automate Commit to Production
Photo by Stuck in Customs - http://flic.kr/p/6L4Xvf

18. “Go as fast as you can. You need a seatbelt. Tests are
your seatbelt.”
Yukihiro ‘Matz' Matsumoto, creator of Ruby.

19. Try: Write the test first
Why? It’s more fun. :)
“Writing tests feels boring. When tests aren't driving
to a solution, they are a chore! When tests drive to a
solution, it feels great!” Eng at Yahoo

20. Problem: Large batch
push hides risk, delays
feedback

21. Try: Small batch sizes
(Scrum and Kanban both do
this)

22. 3. Product Safety

23. In product development, we
create value by generating
valuable information efficiently.
- Don Reinertsen
http://reinertsenassociates.com/the-four-impostors-success-failure-knowledge-creation-and-learning/

24. Most information, lowest
cost.
http://reinertsenassociates.com/the-four-impostors-success-failure-knowledge-creation-and-learning/
Aim here

25. Try: Testing
Assumptions

26. Fake Door
A/B Test
Prototypes
Storyboards

27. Don’t test everything
Cost to build >> cost of research
→ User Research
Just build it
Complexity
Certainty
Cost to build < cost of research →
Fake Door Testing
Cost to build << cost of research
→ A/B Testing

28. Photo by HomeSpot HQ - http://flic.kr/p/e3oP9T
Problem: A hammer
looking for nails

29. Try: Empathy

30. Personas
User Nights
Hallway Testing
Customer Interviews

31. Problem: Unwillingness to Change
Time
Willingnesstochange

32. Try: Set a cadence every
4 - 6 weeks + clear
criteria continue / pivot
decisions.

33. Try: Funerals for
pivoted products. :)

34. Summary:
1. Increase psychological safety
2. Increase technical safety
3. Increase product safety

35. Leadership Shift
From: “What is your solution and what
analysis lead you to that solution?”
To: “What’s the fastest way to get an
experiment to test that idea.” - Scott Cook
Lean Startup Conference 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0HyuX9ZLus Photo by jdlasica - http://flic.kr/p/jNhbx6

36. Ask these 5 questions

37. Coaching Kata
1. What do you want to achieve?
2. Where are you now?
3. What’s in your way?
4. What is the next step and what do you
expect?
5. When can we see what we learned from
taking that step?
Mike Rother: Coaching Kata https://youtu.be/n3G0V7Wthbc

38. Try this at your next
1:1.

39. You’ll build the next
generation of
innovators.

40. Photo by San Francisco Public Library - http://flic.kr/p/6jKUSV
"There's no doubt the work went faster
because of the net," Lefty Underkoffler.

41. End