AXA’s Digital Agency purpose is to deliver innovative services to both AXA customers and prospects, in 55 countries. Their goal is to fullfill AXA’s motto which is «born to protect», through numerous services that assist the customer thoughout her digital life in general (protection) and during her digital interaction with her insurance company. In his talk at the Lean IT Summit 2015, Yves Caseau explained how they run the innovation process and how they try to circumvent some of the obstacles, such as distributed locations, when running agile development methods. With a specific focus on the «Customer Feedback Learning Loop», which is the heart of their Lean Startup implementation. More Lean IT stories on www.lean-it-summit.com

1. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 1/15
Yves Caseau
Head of AXA Digital Agency
NATF (National Academy of Technologies of France)
Lean Startup as the Innovation
Engine for the Digital Agency at AXA
Yves Caseau
Group Head of Digital, AXA
NATF

2. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 2/15
Outline
1. Design Thinking
Capture the pain points,
define the job to be done
2. Minimum Viable Product
Meet your users on their turf and
learn from them
3. Growth Hacking
Harvest customer satisfaction
LEAN STARTUP
PIVOT
TROUBLESHOOTING
GROWTH HACKING
GROWTH MODEL
“Life is too short to build stuff that people do not use”

3. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 3/15
Innovation is solving a problem that matters
Pain point : a problem that is known or hidden
Don’t ask customers what they want
Define the “job to be done” from the customer’s point of view

4. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 4/15
Pains may be hidden one behind another
“Pain-storming” to find root causes
Observe customers to find the solutions that they have found
Craft your promise with care – Unique Value Proposition

5. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 5/15
Design Experiences to Procure Deep Customer Satisfaction
Customer-centric view of products & services
Experience design to reduce friction and increase pleasure
Emotion design : think like a magician

6. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 6/15
“It’s Really Hard to Design Products by Focus Groups” – Steve Jobs
Discuss with customers about their problems
Observe more than you talk and get to know your future users
Get feedback using prototypes

7. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 7/15
Learn By Observing Customers as Fast as Possible
MVP: Minimum Viable Product that user may use
“Fail Fast” … but iterate … “to succeed sooner” !
 “Innovation Accounting” : know your assumptions to validate
or invalidate them

8. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 8/15
“Do One Thing, Really, Really Well” - Google
“Only one chance to make a good impression”
“The UVP is the promise that the MVP delivers”
Measure as much as you can to base your decisions on facts

9. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 9/15
 Bring Marketing / Design and Software together as a team
Digital innovation requires synchronized work
Leverage the power of visual management
Cross-Functional Teams that Live and Breathe Together

10. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 10/15
Distributed Agile is like Long-Distance Relationships
Compelling digital experiences rely on multi-components
systems
Create long-distance proximity “at all costs”
 Practice & cross-functional training : Distributed Agile is hard
 DevOps : Continuous build and delivery requires automation

11. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 11/15
“The Fastest Way to Learn is to Talk to Customers”
Three paths to implement a “Customer Feedback Learning
Loop”
Troubleshooting is priority #1, before adding features
Set measurable goals, such as the Sean Ellis test

12. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 12/15
Growth Hacking is the Art of Growing Adoption Curves
Use Pirate Metrics to understand your customer growth
“Nail It before Scale It” : retention before virality
 A3 is still the best tool to manage continuous improvement

13. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 13/15
The Business Case is the Consequence, not the Seed of Digital Innovation
Grow the business model from customer usage
“Affordable Loss” versus Business Case
 Pivoting : Producing new assumptions from observing new usage

14. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 14/15
“Make Your Product Your Distribution Channel”
Growth Hacking : Mix marketing into your source code
Create a growth model based on retention and virality
 “Virality is not something that you do to a product.
It is something that the product is”. Seth Godin

15. Yves Caseau - Lean Startup at AXA – October 2015 15/15
Conclusion
 Lean Startup is a methodology that works !
 Has become a de facto standards, modulo variations
 “Lean Canvas” practice : really useful
 Toyota Way applied to producing validated knowledge
 Main contribution of Eric Ries : identifying the “process part” of innovation
 Lean principles and culture throughout
 Lean Startup co-exists with Digital Software Requirements
 Success in the digital world stems from hands-on capabilities
 Fully compatible with Lean Software Factory ambition 