Getting To Product Market Fit Quickly
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This 1-hour workshop marries the best practices from product strategy with those of fast and efficient technology teamwork and delivery. Youll learn how to get your product organization working as a single cohesive, well-oiled machine to deliver the right product to market as quickly as possible. We will cover how to use both qualitative and quantitative measures to ensure that your product is solving the right problem; how to optimize and streamline the way your team designs, builds, and deploys software to your customers; and, how to beat the competition in strategy and execution.
Getting To Product Market Fit Quickly
- 1. Getting to Product Market Fit Quickly Sam McAfee @sammcafee
- 2. Tonights Agenda Solving the Right Problem Building Your Product Quickly Managing Competition Q & A
- 3. About me Started making software in 1999/2000. Survived the Dot-Com crash. Lots of consulting + actual experience ;-) Early adopter of Agile, Kanban, and Lean Currently CTO at POPVOX Writing a book about startup patterns.
- 5. Product Market Fit Solve a really painful problem for a real customer. Do it as fast as humanly possible. Make it dif鍖cult for anyone to catch up with you.
- 6. A brief word on product strategy
- 7. Solving the Right Problem
- 8. Solving the Right Problem Understand the customer using personas. Conduct problem interviews. Conduct solution interviews. Iterate, as needed.
- 9. Customer Personas Lightweight personas capture your assumptions about customer behavior, goals, and demographics.
- 10. Persona Tips Use paper and sharpies. Always include a sketch. Dont model real people. Demographics should inform behaviors. Behaviors should inform problems.
- 11. Problem Interviews Validate that the customer has the problems you think they do. And 鍖nd ones you didnt think of!
- 12. Problem Interview Tips Be nice and friendly. Youre not selling something. Call it research. Listen more than you talk. Have someone else take notes for you. Say, tell me more about that when you hear something interesting. Count things to add up later.
- 13. Solution Interviews Dont combine with problem interviews. Use the lowest 鍖delity solution possible. Start with your face, then paper, then maybe software. Dont tell them how to use your solution. Give them a scenario. Then observe and listen. This is a test of your idea! Not your actual product. Dont get caught up in the details. Get their email address for later.
- 14. Solving the Right Problem Understand the customer using personas. Conduct problem interviews. Conduct solution interviews. Iterate, as needed.
- 16. Building Products Quickly De鍖ne the work with user stories. Visualize the work with a Kanban system. Use cross-functional, dedicated, co-located teams. Optimize time and space.
- 17. User Stories Simple format. Include lo-鍖 visuals. De鍖nition of done.
- 18. Dont make user stories too detailed. Rely instead on frequent communication.
- 19. Avoid high-鍖delity mock-ups. Use a design framework and sketches instead.
- 20. De鍖nition of done criteria for user stories should be testable with automation, wherever possible.
- 21. Kanban Systems Its all about 鍖ow. Model current process. Visualize all the work. Limit work-in-progress. Measure cycle time.
- 22. The Kanban board is always a work in progress. It should be designed by the team doing the work, and modi鍖ed as needed.
- 23. If you dont measure your cycle time, you cannot see if your team is improving.
- 24. Limiting work-in-progress reduces your batch size. It is the best way to increase your cycle time.
- 25. Stop measuring individual productivity. Watch the work, not the worker.
- 26. Cross-functional Teams Everyone sits together. Work on a few related things at a time. Together. Reduce the number of hand-offs between functions.
- 27. Separating design work from development work creates larger batches. Larger batches increase cycle time.
- 28. Working on too many stories at the same time increases the number of dependencies. More dependencies increases cycle time.
- 29. Hand-offs between work functions results in longer queues of un鍖nished work. Longer queues increases cycle time.
- 30. Optimize Space and Time No substitute for co- location (sorry, Slack!) Co-location builds trust. Remote work should respect Conways Law.
- 31. Co-location reduces the number and frequency of meetings required to coordinate work. Fewer meetings decreases cycle time.
- 32. Working in the same physical space results in casual, social behaviors that build trust. Trust helps teams move faster. Trust also helps reduce turnover.
- 33. Remote teams requires more communication, and results in slower feedback loops. Slower feedback loops increase cycle time.
- 34. Building Products Quickly De鍖ne the work with user stories. Visualize the work with a Kanban system. Use cross-functional, dedicated, co-located teams. Optimize time and space.
- 36. Managing Competition Dont worry too much, or too little, about competition. If there is no competition, youre probably in trouble. Competition helps you focus.
- 37. Worry Just Enough Competition means there is an actual business problem, and someone is already solving it. Dont bend your whole strategy around what others are doing. Use your vision. Use WIP limits for your competitive strategy, too. You cant build everything for everyone.
- 38. Understand the Competition Your problem interviews tell you how customers solve their problem now. That is your competition. There is always competition or there is no business. Do not compete with everyone. Integration can be a great distribution strategy. You should only compete on features that are in alignment with your product strategy.
- 39. How Competition Helps Understand your customer better. Differentiate your solution. Clarify your long-term strategy. Prioritize your work according to your strategy.
- 40. Product Market Fit Solve a really painful problem for a real customer. Do it as fast as humanly possible. Make it dif鍖cult for anyone to catch up with you.
- 41. Thank You!