This document discusses how to become a lean product developer by adopting habits that focus on efficiency and continuous learning. It recommends "leaning" business ideas through customer validation, building solutions faster or not at all using just-in-time implementation, and continuously measuring what matters to optimize the system and throw away waste. The document emphasizes learning by getting customer feedback, formulating hypotheses to test, using A3 problem solving templates, and shipping solutions frequently to learn from real-world use. The overall message is that respecting people, understanding purpose, improving continuously, and engaging customers are key habits of lean product development.

1. Maneuver Warfare and Other Badass
Habits of a Lean Product Developer
Marko Taipale
Tampere Goes Agile 2011
Lean Product Developer = Developer of business, products
and software

2. 2 reasons...
Why this topic is
important for you?

5. 1
We are wasting time and effort
on doing the wrong thing
Lean: respect people

6. Features used
16%
13% 20% valuable
19% Sometimes
Often
7% Always
Never
Rarely
45%
XP2002 CHAOS report

7. 2
53% of us don’t know what the
company is trying to achieve
TBWA North - Study on 2010
We do not see the purpose in our work
or
We do not know if the work we do has a purpose

8. Lean product developer
Respects the people
Understands, establishes and clarifies the purpose
Improves continuously by learning

9. How to become a lean
product developer?

11. Cycle as fast as possible

12. Habits of a lean
product developer
1. "Lean" your business ideas IDEAS
2. Build faster (or not at all!)
LEARN BUILD
3. Measure it!
MEASURE
4. Learn Faster

13. 1. "Lean" your business ideas
2. Build faster (or not at all!)
3. Measure it!
4. Learn Faster

14. What is a ”business idea”?

15. What is a ”business idea”?
This guy is guessing...
It is just a “series of guesses”

16. How to communicate your
business idea?

19. 4 9
1 3 2
8 5
7 6

20. So where is the guess?
Remember this guy?

22. How to validate the guesses?

23. Customer Development
Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery Validation Creation Building
Problem / Product /
Solution Fit Market Fit Scale
Organization
Proposed Business Scale
MVP Model Execution
Scale
Operations
Sales &
Proposed Marketing
Funnels Roadmap
Customers are part of the system

24. Customer Development
Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery Validation Creation Building
Problem / Product /
Solution Fit Market Fit Scale
Get out of the building! Organization
Proposed Business Scale
MVP Model Execution
Scale
Operations
Sales &
Proposed Marketing
Funnels Roadmap
Customers are part of the system

25. Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery Validation Creation Building
hypotheses,
experiments,
insights
data, feedback,
insights
Product
Development

26. Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery
Problem Team
Validation Creation Building
hypotheses,
experiments,
insights
data, feedback,
insightsSolution Team
Product
Development

27. Lean Business Idea -
Summary
• Business idea is just a series of guesses
• You can validate the guesses with the help
of Customer Development
• Business Model Canvas is effective
tool to communicate your business ideas

28. 1. "Lean" your business ideas
2. Build faster (or not at all!)
3. Measure it!
4. Learn Faster

29. The Concept of an
inventory
Business Design Development
case
Testing Deployment

30. The Concept of an
inventory
2 8 10
Business Design Development
case
Testing Deployment
5
25

31. Don’t write the code!
Business Design Development
case
Testing Deployment
It is an investment that does not produce anything!
Cheapest solution

32. Don’t write the code!
Business Design Development
case
Testing Deployment
If you write the code..

33. Inventory with ATDD
2 8 5
Business Development
Design
case & Test
Deployment
15

34. Architecture
Realisation Vision
Update both, JIT implementation, JIT Scalability, Think big, implement small

35. Inventory with ATDD +
JIT Architecture
2 5
Business Design, Development Deployment
case & Test
7

36. Continuous Integration
Get the stuff
Build & deploy Test & Report
from VCS
+
Continuous Deployment
Deploy to Monitor &
Backup
production Alert

37. Continuous Integration & Deployment
coordination and transaction cost

38. Inventory with ATDD +
JIT Architecture + CD
2
Business Design, Development
case & ATDD & Continuous
Deployment
2

39. What about design of
the product?
• UX
• Business model pivots etc.
• Some inventories are needed - they are
actually buffers

40. Example value stream

41. Summary- Build faster
• Think timing (Just-In-Time)
• Think big, implement small (and fast)
• be aware of the inventory (queues) in your
product development process (system)

42. 1. "Lean" your business ideas
2. Build faster (or not at all!)
3. Measure it!
4. Learn Faster

43. What are things we
NEED to measure?
• How do you know you’re done?
• How do you know something is more
important/valuable than something else?
• How do you know how are you doing?
• How do you choose between two or more
solutions?

44. Number One Waste?
Features used
16%
13%
19% Sometimes
Often
7% Always
Never
Rarely
45%
XP2002 CHAOS report
Measure the usage, think measurements BEFORE your
implement
Monitor continuously

45. Measuring if it is used
Owner: Marko
Size: S
Comments for service offers and requests
5 days
QUEUE: 1.6.2010 DONE: 6.6.2010
READY: 3.6.2010
3 days

46. Levels Monitoring
of monitoring
Biz reports Business
Hearbeat.rb
& navigator Application
Hearbeat.rb
& Monit Containers & DB
Monit &
Nagios OS & Services
Monit &
Nagios Hardware

47. Funnel analysis
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue

48. Testing hypotheses with
Split Testing
A B
Acquisition Acquisition
Activation Activation
Retention Retention
Referral Referral
Revenue Revenue
20% 40%
Front page 1, Front Page 2
Learning vs. measuring

49. Summary - Measure it
• Measure what matters to you
• Measure to throw away the waste
(optimize the whole system)
• Think measuring when implementing the
solution
• Measure the business (not only tech)

50. 1. "Lean" your business ideas
2. Build faster (or not at all!)
3. Measure it!
4. Learn Faster

52. Ship it! - learning
inventory
2
Business Design, Development
case & ATDD & Continuous
Deployment
Amazon: new deployment every 11.6 seconds
Facebook: continuous deployment
Flickr: same thing
IMVU, KaChing, KISSMetrics...
Elisa, Huitale...
Continuous deployment is a way to reduce learning inventory

53. Get out of the building
meet your customers

54. Testing hypotheses with
Split Testing
A B
Acquisition Acquisition
Activation Activation
Retention Retention
Referral Referral
Revenue Revenue
20% 40%
Front page 1, Front Page 2 (tee balsamiq?)
Learning vs. measuring

55. Everything is a guess
So how to formulate that as
hypotheses?

56. A way of learning
5 whys
remember economics
remember to choose the levels of “whys” to attack

57. A3 template for problem
solving
http://www.crisp.se/lean/a3-template
using this as impediment description
template

58. Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery
Problem Team
Validation Creation Building
hypotheses,
experiments,
insights
data, feedback,
insightsSolution Team
Product
Development
wider bandwidth (than single PO model)

59. Summary - Learn faster
• Truth is out there: Ship It & Get out from
the building
• Identify root causes and use A3 for
problem solving
Tie every action to the big picture
Measure customer satisfaction and profit
Customers are part of the system

60. End Slide
• Stop wasting people’s time
• Communicate the purpose to engage
people around you

61. Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful, committed people can
Margaret Mead
Change the World
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has

62. Marko Taipale
@markotaipale
huitale.blogspot.com
marko.taipale@huitale.com
I help companies to improve by showing
what I have done, how I have done it
and what I have learned about it
I am also a CTO of