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“Lean” Product Management<br />Can Product Management benefit from Lean Startup practices?<br />

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2<br />Thank You to Our Sponsors<br />

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About Me: Shardul Mehta<br />Product management & marketing professional<br />Early career: software developer<br />Did my first start-up in 2000<br />Yes, I was a dot-commer!<br />Small business, family business, enterprise, B2C, B2B, SaaS, web apps, healthcare, retail services, financial services<br />MBA, Tepper Business School, Carnegie Mellon<br />B.S., Computer & Information Sciences<br />Twitter: @shardulmehta<br />www.linkedin.com/in/shardulmehta<br />http://streetsmartproductmanager.com<br />

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What is Lean Startup?<br /><ul><li>Started (and trademarked) by Eric Ries – serial entrepreneur, popular blogger

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“Lean isn’t about being cheap [but is about] being less wasteful and still doing things that are big.” – Eric Ries </li></ul>http://theleanstartup.com<br />4<br />

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What is Lean Startup?<br />+<br />Eliminate Waste<br />New Product or Service<br />Low burn startup<br />Speed of iterations is key to success<br />Slideshare presentation “Building a Lean Startup” by Ash Maurya<br />http://www.slideshare.net/ashmaurya/building-a-lean-startup<br />

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A synthesis of:<br />“Customer Development”, a term coined by Steve Blank used to describe the parallel process of building a continuous customer feedback loop throughout the product development process as defined in his book The Four Steps to Epiphany<br />Agile software development<br />Application of Toyota’s lean production practices, which focuses on speed and waste reduction via a rigorous and disciplined process<br />What is Lean Startup?<br /><ul><li>Running Lean is a term coined by Ash Maurya that defines a workflow for building web based software based on his own experiences of rigorously applying and testing Lean Startup practices</li></li></ul><li>Principles of Lean Startup<br />Validated Learning<br />Lean Startup is about a methodology of learning<br />A culture of discovery and validated learning is needed to truly have new product development<br />Learning can be validated scientifically by running experiments that allow us to test each element of our vision<br />Innovation accounting<br />To improve outcomes and hold entrepreneurs accountable, we need to focus on the boring stuff: how to measure progress, how to set up milestones, how to prioritize work<br /><ul><li>Build-Measure-Learn

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The fundamental activity of a startups is to turn ideas into products, measure how customers respond, and then learn whether to pivot or persevere. All successful startup processes should be geared to accelerate that feedback loop</li></ul>7<br />From http://lean.st/dharmesh<br />

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Capture business model hypothesis<br />Systematically test our plan<br />Formulate testable, falsifiable hypotheses<br />Not measurable (“leap of faith”):<br />Being known as an “expert” will drive early adopters<br />Specific and testable:<br />Blog post will drive 100 sign-ups<br />Validate qualitatively, verify quantitatively<br />Pick bold outcomes to generate strong negative/positive signals to stop, refine or seek permission to move forward<br />Create accessible dashboards to measure progress<br />Communicate learnings early and often<br />Iterate our way to Product/Market fit<br />Have we built something people want?<br />“Steps”<br />Expected outcome too vague<br />Specific expected outcome based on repeatable action<br />

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Build a Lean Canvas<br />Created by Ash Maurya as an adaptation of Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas, described in his book Business Model Generation<br />Capture the Business Model Hypothesis<br />Benefits:<br /><ul><li>Fast, compared to writing a b-plan

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Multiple canvases can be outlined in a single afternoon

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Concise: distill your idea down to its essence

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Portable: easier to carry, share, explain and update</li></ul>From “Lean Startup is a Rigorous Process, Ash Maurya’s blog, http://www.ashmaurya.com/2010/09/lean-startup-is-a-rigorous-process/<br />

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Systematically Test Your Plan<br />Ideal time to seek funding<br />Do we have a problem worth solving?<br />Have we built something people want?<br />How do we accelerate growth?<br />Are we ready to learn from customers?<br />Focus: Validated Learning<br />Experiments: Pivots (i.e., finding a plan that works)<br />Focus: Growth<br />Experiments: Optimizations<br />Focus<br />3 key questions:<br /><ul><li>Is it something customers want? (Must-have)

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Can it be solved? (Feasible)

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Will they pay for it? If not, who will? (Viable)</li></ul>Focus<br /><ul><li>Lay groundwork to build MVP and maximize future iterations for speed, learning and focus

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Build MVP for early adopters

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Launch!</li></ul>Focus<br /><ul><li>Identify the right metrics to measure Product/Market Fit

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Prioritize and act on learnings

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Systematically iterate toward achieving Product/Market Fit</li></ul>Focus<br /><ul><li>How does the “mass market” find our solution?

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Are they telling others?</li></ul>Continuous validation via carefully scripted customer interviews<br />

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Iterate Our Way to Product/Market Fit<br />Goals:<br /><ul><li>Is there a problem worth solving?

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How do customers solve this problem today?</li></ul>Before we build the right solution, we have to understand the problem first<br />Goal: Define a test possible solution (before implementing it)<br />Customers are better at articulating problems than visualizing solutions<br />Goal: Use feedback from the demo to distill the product down to its essence (MVP) to build and test qualitatively with customers<br />A strong signal grants us permission to move forward, but does not guarantee scalability<br />Goal: Verify qualitative signals with actionable macro metrics<br />From Running Lean by Ash Maurya<br />

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Focus on the right stuff at the right time, and reduce waste<br />Validate a problem is worth solving, before defining the solution<br />Test our vision by measuring how customers behave<br />Build a continuous feedback loop with customers throughout the product development cycle<br />Find early (preferably paying) customers<br />Decide what goes into Release 1.0<br />Identify ideal time to seek dollars and resources<br />Test pricing<br />Maximize for speed, learning and focus<br />Iterate for Product/Market Fit in small increments<br />Benefits of Lean Startup<br />

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13<br />Thanks Again To Our Sponsors<br />