@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Experiment and validate
business ideas
by Pavel Chunyayev
DevOps Showcase Amsterdam
25 January 2018, Mercure Hotel
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Innovation
• Innovation is at the core of every company’s operations
• Innovation is both hated and loved
• Engineers are afraid that failures will have impact on their appraisals
• Managers know how to work with business plans
• But business plans don’t help dealing with uncertainties
• You need to try, fail, learn from failure and develop you core competences
• It has never been easier (quicker, cheaper) to innovate in the current digital
world and technologies for rapid software development and delivery
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
About me
• Originally from Ukraine
• Last 3 years in NL
• Ik spreek graag Nederlands
• With Levi9 since 2010
• DevOps since 2011
• Currently - Business Technology Consultant
• MBA student at ABS, UvA, part time, 1st year
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
1. Hypothesis
2. Experiment
3. Repeat
Three easy steps to innovate
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
1. Hypothesis
2. Experiment
3. Repeat
Three easy steps to innovate
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 1: Hypothesis
• Comes from science – everything is a hypothesis and needs to be
checked – validated
• Every idea, feature of improvement should be treated as hypothesis –
something to be validated first.
There are two types of innovation to be expressed as hypothesis:
• Explore
• Exploit
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 1: Hypothesis - Explore
• Introduce new feature/service/business model
• Focus on customer experience, behavior, satisfaction
• Design thinking, design sprints, double diamond, etc.
• Startups are doing exactly this
• Lean enterprises with ’the missing function’ are focused on this type
of innovation as well
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 1: Hypothesis - Exploit
• Improve existing operations
• Change the process (and customer behavior)
• Increase efficiency (and make financial impact)
• Basis for Continuous improvements
• Assumptions
• Ill, blame, cure, consequence
• Why do we need a change?
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 1: Hypothesis – The change
• Fight the status quo
• It’s your burden to explain why the change is needed
• Dig to discover underlying assumptions and use them
• Use “Ill, blame, cure, consequence” model
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 1: Everything is a hypothesis
• Don’t forget about the metrics
• Ideal metrics are business metrics
• Ideal focus is on business value
• Each engineer is a part of business and needs to act accordingly
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
1. Hypothesis
2. Experiment
3. Repeat
Three easy steps to innovate
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 2: Experiment
• Idea is worth nothing, it’s implementation that matters
• Come up with experiment that will test the underlying assumptions
and generate valuable feedback
• You need a truly cross-functional, multi-disciplinary team
• Focus on an MVP instead of a Perfect product
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 2: Experiment - Metrics
• Measurements, metrics
• Are people working differently now? Are they using new process?
• Have we increased efficiency? Reduced costs?
• Is new feature/app/service used by the customers?
• Use actionable metrics instead of vanity metrics
• Focus on business value
• Focus on team’s impact
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
1. Hypothesis
2. Experiment
3. Repeat
Three easy steps to innovate
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Step 3: Repeat
• There are a lot of frameworks, methodologies or ideas that promote
working in cycles, iterations, loops.
• Scrum, OODA, PDCA, Build-Measure-Learn
• They have core structure in common:
• Understand the current situation and come up with an idea to try
• Execute an implementation (validation, test, experiment)
• Check results, decide what to do next and repeat the cycle
• Your work is never over
• Continuous Improvements or Continuous Experimentation
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
1. Hypothesis
2. Experiment
3. Repeat
Three easy steps to innovate
@PavelChunyayev@PavelChunyayev
Key Takeaways
• Innovation reduces the risk
• Innovation is not costly
• Come up with business ideas
• Validate them
• Repeat
•Innovate
+31 6 2117 5817
pavel@levi9.com

Experiment and validate business ideas - Talk outline at DevOps Showcase Amsterdam - 25-01-2018