Do your products have features that are rarely or never used? Does it takes your organization the full investment of building and launching a product to validate an idea? Is your organization challenged with striking the right balance between the demands of a scalable, high quality product and innovating on the most compelling problems and opportunities for your customers? Learn how a formal discovery process may be the answer you are looking for Learning Objectives Relate to how a formal Discovery Framework helps solve some commonly expressed organizational challenges Learn how Design Thinking principles, tools and techniques can be applied to discovery efforts in an Agile environment Determine when and how to engage customers in building the right thing

1. Building the Right Thing with a
Formalized Discovery Process
Presented By:
Anjali Leon

2. Anjali Leon
Founder and Principal Coach & Consultant at PPL Coach
Co-Creator of the
PPL Agility and Resilience Navigator
• Coach, Workshop Designer & Facilitator, Advisor, Speaker
• Value-driven and Values-based Product, People and Personal Leadership
• Design Thinking, Lean & Agile, Co-Active Coaching
• Founder of Empowering South Florida Women In Agile
• IC Agile Member Org., Game Changer Index Partner Org.
• Clients include: Modernizing Medicine, Alpine ITW, Pearson, UVA,
Office Depot, , Optical Group, AJT Systems, HealthFirst, AmEx
@anjalileon

5. HOW DO YOU KNOW?
q How satisfied are your users and customers with your
product / service?
q How closely does your product reflect the goals of your
users and customers ?
q What percentage of features of your product / service are
rarely or never used ?
Building
the Right
Thing?
@anjalileon

6. Learning Objectives
What is
Discovery?
1
Why a
Discovery
Framework?
2
Elements of a
Discovery
Framework
3
Tips for
Discovery at
your
organization
4
@anjalileon

7. Why is an Agilist talking about
Discovery?
@anjalileon

8. The Agile Manifesto
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and
helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on
the left more.
Agilemanifesto.org
@anjalileon

9. CUSTOMERSCUSTOMERS
@anjalileon

10. Create better
OUTCOMES
Create high
quality,
scalable
OUTPUT
@anjalileon

12. The Business Context
Ø 1000 employee business unit within large, complex organization
Ø Product: Fully online K-12 schools with over 75k full time students
enrolled
Ø Highly competitive business landscape with aggressive growth
goals
Ø Engaged in full re-build of the learning platform
Ø Scaled Agile (SAFe) development framework
@anjalileon

13. What is Discovery?
A thoughtful, disciplined and creative
approach for the right people to focus on
composing and validating a great
experience for users
@anjalileon

14. Discovery
Create better
OUTCOMES
Delivery
Create high
quality,
scalable
OUTPUT
@anjalileon

15. Elements of the Discovery Framework
1
Cross-functional
participation
2
Principles of
Design Thinking
3
Integrate into
existing process
4
Expectations &
Adaptation
@anjalileon

16. Jake Knapp
Jeff Patton
Teresa Torres Dave Landis
Melissa Perry
Discovery Framework
@anjalileon

17. 1. Cross-Functional Participation
Business
Owner
Business
SME
Vendor
Support
SME
Business
SME
Engineering
SME
Legal SME
Finance
SME
Analytics
Consultant
Extended
Discovery
Team
Product
Manager
UX
Designer
Core
Discovery
Team
@anjalileon

18. Cross-Functional Team Design
Engineer
Engineer
Engineer
…
Business
Owner
Business
SME
Vendor
Other
Product
Managers
Business
SME
Engineering
SME
Legal SME
Finance
SME
Analytics
Consultant
Extended
Team
Architect
Product
Manager
UX
Designer
Product
Owner
Engg.
QA
Lead
Core
Team
Delivery
Team
Eng.
Manager
Scrum
Master
Critical for continuity of
understanding real need
and intent
@anjalileon

19. 2. Principles
of Design
Thinking
Customer-centric
Challenge assumptions
Value diverse perspectives
Explore multiple solutions
Base decisions on feedback
@anjalileon

20. 24
Design Thinking & Discovery Framework
Tests create
new ideas for
the product
PRODUCT
BACKLOG
IDEAS
Define
Shelve
Understand ValidateIdeate
Empathize Define Ideate Prototype Test
@anjalileon

21. The Discovery Process
Understand current
functionality
Customer interviews
Identify pain points
and potential
opportunities
Ideate potential
solutions
Create high-level
concept
Create hypothesis
Build prototypes
Get feedback from users
Synthesize Feedback
UNDERSTAND IDEATE VALIDATE DEFINE
Identify Viable Option
Define requirements
Prioritize based on cost
of Delay
@anjalileon

22. Discovery + Scrum
Empathize
Ideate
Sprint
Review
/ Retrospective
Potentiall
y
Shippable
increment
Product
Backlog
Sprint
execution
Sprint planning
Learn
Validate
Define
Define
Understand
3. Integrate into existing Process
@anjalileon

23. Discovery (Features)
Portfolio Kanban Program Kanban
Discovery (Epics)
@anjalileon
Integration with the SAFe Framework

24. Investment in the Right Tools
Internal
Wiki for
Blogging
Online collaboration via MURAL - a game changer!
Everyone can engage
Templates, Virtual stickies and Dot Voting
Video
conferencing
Break out rooms
Recording
Manage artifacts
Manage the process
@anjalileon

25. 4. Clear Expectations & Continuous Adaptation
Clear goal Timebox
Work in
Progress
Limits
Inspect &
Adapt
@anjalileon

26. BUILD
THE
RIGHT
THING
BUILD
THE
THING
RIGHT
@anjalileon

27. @anjalileon

28. Discovery in your Organization?
Get an internal sponsor
Make discovery a priority
Be strategic and intentional about discovery
Involve customer in the process of co-creation
Invest in the right tools and training
Make it your own
@anjalileon

29. Anjali Leon
Agility Coach, Educator & Strategic Advisor
Founder and Principal, PPL Coach
Founder of Empowering South Florida Women in Agile
www.ppl-coach.com
Email: aleon@ppl-coach.com
@anjalileon
@anjalileon

30. QUESTIONS?
@anjalileon