identify experiments to test hypotheses
understand how to do outcome-based planning
describe hypothesis-driven development
understand why small batches are important
define A/B testing and the culture it enables
learning outcomes
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Epic
Theme
Story
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projects: scope, cost, time
product: impact / value (e.g. change in behavior)
project vs product
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experts are what they do
“Given a representative task in the domain, a
badass performs in a superior way, more reliably”
—Kathy Sierra, Badass
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minimize output, maximize outcome
Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping p. xlii
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impact mapping
Gojko Adzic, Impact Mapping
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@jezhumble
Jeff Gothelf “Better product definition with Lean UX and Design” http://bit.ly/TylT6A
hypothesis-driven delivery
We believe that
[building this feature]
[for these people]
will achieve [this outcome].
We will know we are successful when we see
[this signal from the market].
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No content
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working backwards
http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2006/11/working_backwards.html
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COST OF EXPERIMENTS
11
Production
Software
SPEED
COST
new services
feasibility spike
service
substitution
integration
Quantitative
forecasting
real-time price
experiment
Data sampling
and modeling tests
Sketches &
Paper Prototypes
Interactive
Prototype
Software
demo
Interviews
& surveys
micro-niche
Wizard of Oz
VIABILITY (BUSINESS) | DESIRABILITY (CUSTOMER) | FEASIBILITY (TECH)
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exercise
• choose a hypothesis from week 2’s class
• design an experiment to test your hypothesis
• what do you expect the results to be?
• what result will confirm your hypothesis?
• what result will disprove your hypothesis?
• how soon can we get the result?
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a/b testing
50% of visitors see
variation A (control)
50% of visitors see
variation B (treatment)
20%
conversion
60%
conversion
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“Etsy’s Product Development with Continuous Experimentation”
Frank Harris and Nellwyn Thomas | http://bit.ly/19Z5izI
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“Etsy’s Product Development with Continuous Experimentation”
Frank Harris and Nellwyn Thomas | http://bit.ly/19Z5izI
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“Etsy’s Product Development with Continuous Experimentation”
Frank Harris and Nellwyn Thomas | http://bit.ly/19Z5izI
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Jon Jenkins, “Velocity Culture, The Unmet Challenge in Ops” 2011 | http://bit.ly/1vJo1Ya
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do less
“Evaluating well-designed and executed
experiments that were designed to
improve a key metric, only about 1/3 were
successful at improving the key metric!”
“Online Experimentation at Microsoft” | Kohavi et al | http://stanford.io/130uW6X
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“I think building this culture is the key to
innovation. Creativity must flow from
everywhere. Whether you are a summer intern
or the CTO, any good idea must be able to seek
an objective test, preferably a test that exposes
the idea to real customers. Everyone must be
able to experiment, learn, and iterate.”
http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/04/early-amazon-shopping-cart.html
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less rework, higher quality
you can stop at any time with a working system
faster feedback (assuming people pay attention)
higher motivation
quickly release high priority features / bugfixes
working in small batches
Don Reinertsen, Principles of Product Development Flow, ch5.
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lead time
“How long would it take your organization to
deploy a change that involved just one
single line of code? Do you do this on a
repeatable, reliable basis?”
Mary and Tom Poppendieck, Implementing Lean Software Development, p59.
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small batches
• Reduce cycle time, variability in flow, risk, overhead
• Accelerates feedback
• Increase efficiency, motivation and urgency
Don Reinertsen, Principles of Product Development Flow, ch5.
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INVEST
• Independent: can be worked on in any order
• Negotiable: a conversation not a contract
• Valuable: delivers benefit to a stakeholder
• Estimable: to a good degree of precision
• Small: less than a week to build
• Testable: clearly defined acceptance criteria
http://bit.ly/small-batches-invest
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experiment design
• Identify risky assumption about your product.
• For example: “in order to make our business model work, 5% of people who
sign up for my service that meet my criteria must pay $100 for the service.”
• Write down hypothesis.
• Design an experiment to test this with small sample size and acceptable level of
precision, including testable success criteria.
• Gather data. Analyze. State results.
• State if hypothesis was validated or not.
• What did you learn? What changes will you make?
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further reading
https://www.infoq.com/presentations/controlled-experiments
https://svpg.com/assets/Files/goodprd.pdf
Tom DeMarco & Tim Lister, Waltzing with Bears
Humble et al, Lean Enterprise ch 9
Gojko Adzic, Impact Mapping