Lean Startup & LeanUX: Stop Bullshitting & Build Some Fucking Value (by Will Evans)

To understand the emergence of Lean Startup and LeanUX, two new methods that seem to be storming the media and software landscape in the business press, we need to go back and understand how these are really the exaptation of Lean Systems Thinking and principles, transplanted from the world of manufacturing into the world of software design. The very idea first introduced by Buckminster Fuller, when he said that everything was becoming ephemeral, or more recently when Marc Andreeson said, “software is eating the world.”

We'll cover aspects of LeanUX research and Lean Startup, which is conducted to gain a validated understanding of the customer’s problem hypothesis to understand if the problem we think customers have, is something they actually have before spending months and tens of thousands of dollars doing wasteful UX research & design time on a concept that delivers no customer value.

This is a radical departure from the traditional “Push,” systems of software design that has dominated the landscape since the early 80s. We’ll trace the provenance of many “new” ideas surfacing in the Lean Startup movement, and show that for many people familiar with Lean Thinking, there is nothing really new here - except some of the nuances in which enterprises are exploring new ways of imaging value creation in large enterprises where more and more of the “output” is information and knowledge, not cars and jet engines.

Transcript

2. WILL EVANS Design Thinker-in-Residence NYU Stern School of Management Will.Evans@PraxisFlow.com @semanticwill BILL BEARD Founder, Creative Director Beard Branding bill@beardbranding.com @writebeard
3. #LeanUX #LeanBranding
4. "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps - to climb beyond them. He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.” - Wittgenstein
5. TRADITIONAL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
6. TRADITIONAL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
7. WHAT IS LEAN STARTUP? A post-positivist apologetics of a “movement”
10. The problem with many startups is that you spend months or years doing research, writing requirements, designing and building software… and discover no customer or user cares.
12. It Started With a Question If startups fail from a lack of customers not product development failure… Then why do we have: •  A process for product development? •  No process for customer development?
13. “A Startup is a human institution designed to deliver a product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty” – Eric Ries
15. “Waste is any human activity which absorbs resources, but creates no value.” - James P Womak and Daniel T. Jones, Lean Thinking
16. Over the past 35 years, design & development, much like Waterfall*, accumulated a lot of wasteful, time- consuming, CYA practices that delivered no discernable value to the business or to customers.
17. If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. - W. Edwards Deming
19. Zach Nies
22. LEAN STARTUP LIFECYCLE
24. LEAN STARTUP BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS
25. GOOB (GET OUT OF THE BUILDING) Hypotheses, Not Requirements Focus on Learning (innovation accounting) Use Iterative Design & Testing Validating before Scale Small Batches = Less Risk CORE LEAN STARTUP CONCEPTS
26. Your team should maximize for: LEARNING FOCUS While Minimizing: CYCLE TIME
27. 1.  Most teams don't start with a customer hypothesis; they work backwards from a solution hypothesis. 2.  Because teams start with a solution hypothesis, it's almost impossible for them to generate multiple hypotheses for testing. 3.  GOOB, when done poorly, is particularly prone to confirmation bias 4.  Formulating hypotheses & stating assumptions is hard. 5.  Designing reliable experiments is a skill that takes time to learn 6.  There is little focus on the organization / value stream 7.  It is “ahistorical” meaning little knowledge of it’s own past DECONSTRUCTING LEAN STARTUP
28. Lean*UX #WTF?
29. By Lean*UX most people really mean “UX in the context of the Lean Startup Method” Term coined by Janice Fraser, Founder of LUXR
30. WHAT is LEANUX?
31. LEAN UX CYCLE
32. FUNDAMENTALS OF LEAN UX •  Balanced, Cross-functional team •  Externalize (visualize) process •  Flow: Think > Make > Check •  Research to understand Customer/Problem Space •  No proxies between customers and team •  Collaborative Sense-making •  Generative Ideation: It’s about optionality •  Formulate many small experiments and measure outcome
33. VALIDATION BOARD
35. Your team should maximize for: LEARNING FOCUS While Minimizing: CYCLE TIME
37. •  Customer Exploration •  Problem Exploration •  Solution Exploration •  Iteration & Scaling LEANUX PROCESS Let’s unpack what this looks like…
38. BASICS OF CUSTOMER EXPLORATION
40. Background
41. UX MANTRA Mantra: You are not the customer. Only through research can we uncover people’s pains, needs, and goals, in their context.
44. •  Customer Exploration •  Problem Exploration •  Solution Exploration •  Iteration & Scaling LEANUX PROCESS
45. How do we make sense of the world so that we can make decisions and act?
46. A BERRYPICKING MODEL OF LEAN STARTUP
47. CYNEFIN
48. CYNEFIN
49. The place of your multiple belongings
50. •  Customer Exploration •  Problem Exploration •  Solution Exploration •  Iteration & Scaling LEANUX PROCESS
51. SOLUTION IDEATION
52. EXPLOITATION vs EXPLORATION
54. TECHNICALLY THIS IS CALLED A CHARRETTE*. CREATE PITCH CRITIQUE
55. Generate lots of design concepts (options*) Present concept as stories Critique using Ritual Dissent Integrate (steal) & Iterate Check stories for coherence Converge around testable solution hypotheses Design Studio *See Chris Matts Real Options Theory
56. •  Customer Exploration •  Problem Exploration •  Solution Exploration •  Iteration & Scaling LEANUX PROCESS
57. ITERATE & SCALE
60. From insights, you can create multiple problem & solution hypotheses sets. It's not about designing the one right solution and refining. It's about testing many solutions to multiple problem hypotheses. It's about many small bets. Maximize Optionality
61. LEANUX PRINCIPLES •  Discover customer problems through research •  Cross-functional collaboration •  Visualize the work •  Invalidate assumptions •  Generate many problem options •  Collaborative solutioning •  Validation before scaling
62. THE LEANUX KATA •  Who is the customer? •  What is their problem? •  What do you know and how do you know it? •  What are your assumptions? How will you test them? •  What have you learned and what should you learn next? •  What is your very next experiment? How will you measure it?
63. LEAN THINKING
64. LEAN PRINCIPLES •  Identify Customers & Value •  Map the Value Stream •  Create Flow by Eliminating Waste •  Respond to Customer Pull •  Continuously Improve
65. PURPOSE, PROCESS, PEOPLE •  Purpose: What customer problems are we trying to achieve to grow the business? What is the value? Where is the target? •  Process: How will the organization assess each major value stream to make sure we’re maximizing optionality while decreasing waste? •  People: How do we empower people to own the process, own the work, and be constantly learning? How can everyone touching the value stream be actively engaged in operating it correctly and continually improving it?
66. LEANUX MANAGEMENT “Lean UX management is not about experts providing answers, or aligning “resources” to a strategic vision. It’s about providing a system of constraints for people to ask the right questions, find purpose in their work, and be empowered to make decisions and constantly learn & improve through experimentation and failure.”
67. WILL EVANS Design Thinker-in-Residence NYU Stern School of Management Will.Evans@PraxisFlow.com @semanticwill