Developers: How to Push Back

Transcript

1. A Celebration of
 Everything Entrepreneurial in Denver September 15 – 20, 2014 #DENStartupWeek
2. Title Sponsors
3. Tech Track Sponsor
4. Partner Sponsors
5. Member Sponsors
6. Developers: When and how to push back and why your company needs you to
7. Pushing back It isn’t easy, but somebody’s got to do it
8. Noel Jorden • @_njorden ! • GoSpotCheck Product Team ! • (Past: Catalpa Labs, Townloop, Feedback.com, PublicEarth, Adapt Technologies, SimAuthor, …) !
9. “Life’s too short to build something nobody wants.” - Ash Maurya, Running Lean
10. Quick note: startup stages • Idea • Launch • Validation • Growth • Transition / Exit (or utter and profound failure)
11. Quick note: startup stages • Idea • Launch • Validation • Growth • Transition / Exit (or utter and profound failure)
12. Why push back?
13. Ok, what’s next?
14. “If you don't know what's important right now, then what's important right now is to figure out what's important right now.” - Greg McKeown, Essentialism
15. “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” - Socrates
16. ! • Shortcuts, easy wins, integrations • Essential, technical core of a feature • Order of operations • Flexibility • Root causes
17. Requirements • Engine, transmission, wheels, doors • Headlights • A/C • Heater • Automatic windows
18. How to push back?
19. Communication & Action • Communicate in the terms of your business • Demonstrate value (fast!) • Deliver stability
20. Pushing for: • Learning (communicate) • Experimentation (demonstrate) • Scalability (stability)
21. 1) Learning
23. “Startups exist not just to make stuff, make money, or even serve customers. They exist to learn how to build a sustainable business.” - Eric Ries, Lean Startup
24. “If you take an idea and just hold it in your head, you unconsciously start to do things that advance you toward that goal.” - Biz Stone, Things a Little Bird Told Me
25. • Basecamp Projects • Listen in on sales calls • Sitdowns with customer success • Watching customers using the app
26. 2) Experimentation
27. “Fire bullets, then cannonballs” - Jim Collins, Great by Choice “...learning can be validated scientifically by running frequent experiments that allow entrepreneurs to test each element of their vision.” - Eric Ries, The Lean Startup “Learn from emergent sources what is working and what is not…” - Clayton Christensen, The Innovator's Solution
28. Assumptions What are yours?
29. Frequent Experimentation • Do we need it ? • Can we test it without building it (all)? • Can we build it without impacting anything else? • Can we build more flexibility into it? • Can we measure it? Selection, speed, isolation, flexibility, feedback
30. Do we need it ? “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.” - Clayton Christensen, The Innovator's Solution • Who’s asking for it? ! • Why? ! • What problem are they trying to solve?
31. Can we test it ! without building it (all)? • Clickable mockups (InVision) • Internal features (ActiveAdmin) • Prototypes (Git, Heroku, Testflight) • MVPs • Production Features
32. Can we build it without impacting anything else? • Lower risk & faster to build • Easier to measure • Easier to remove!
33. Can we build more flexibility into it? • Retool experiment without restarting • Space for customer driven features “We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details…” - Jeff Bezos
34. Can we make it measurable? • Understand what we really want to measure • Provide visibility into measurement • Keen.io, Google Analytics, internal “What gets measured, gets managed” - Peter Drucker
35. 3) Scalability
36. Scalability • Finish the Experiment • 5 Whys
37. Finish the experiment “Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results.” - Thomas Edison
38. 5 Whys
39. 5 Whys • The app is timing out on these pages. Why? • The customer has thousands of active missions. Why? • They need different versions of the missions. Why? • They need different questions to appear in different contexts. Why? • …
40. When push back?
41. • When firing cannonballs • During the 20 mile march • Working in the deliberate channel When not to push back?
43. Thanks! Questions? What shall we chat about?