Product thinking and Dual track Agile is vital for building the products for customers

1. Product Thinking and
Dual Track Agile
Aslam Hirani

2. Software is eating into products and services across industries
Music Retailers
Recruitment
Finance
Agriculture
Telecom

3. We are not building products as per customer needs
21%: One in five products being
delivered fail to meet customer
needs**
64 % of features in products are
“rarely or never used*
*Standish Group
**Mindtheproduct

4. “A brilliant solution to the
wrong problem can be
worse than no solution at
all: solve the correct
problem.”― Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things

5. Are products built to be in Vacuum

6. We need to align with customer needs for building products and services

7. Who is responsible to
build the right products

8. Entire team(Stakeholders, Business, Design, Dev, Ops) needs to have product
thinking

9. Product Thinking and Dual Track Agile enables to build products based on
client needs and for entire team to think from product perspective
Understand
Define
Prototype
Validate
Understand
and Design
Build and
test
Deploy
Validate
Discover
Deliver
PM/PO
TeamCustomer
Ideas, Strategy,
Feedback

10. Discover Track enables to get faster feedback from customers
Understand
Design
Prototype
Validate
Understand the users
Define, What is to
be built
Prototype and Take
Feedback
● Persona
● Empathy Map
● Interviews
● Surveys
● Focus Groups
● User Research
● Story Mapping
● Story Boarding
● Paper Prototype
● Rapid Prototype
● A/B Testing
1 2 3

11. Discover and Deliver track work in parallel to delivery right products to
customers
● Add/Update/Remove features
based on customer feedback
● Involve delivery team, where
needed in discovery phase
Discover
Deliver
Shippable
Product
Shippable
Product
Shippable
Product
Validated
Prototype
Validated
Prototype
Validated
Prototype
● Deliver based on the
discovery track inputs
● Provide feedback to
discovery from delivery
phase
● Customer feedback from
product usage to flow to
discovery track

12. Case Study
Chess game

13. Project Charter (4-6 Lines) and Time Frame
Why : Chess games provide only limited level options(basic,medium,expert).
Programs does not learn and adjust based on the user learning
Who : Amatuer Chess players
What :To create mobile based chess game that learns based
Time Frame - 3 Months

14. Business Goals and Success Measures
Business Outcomes/Goals
• Application should be easy to use
• Application should be scalable
Process Goals
• To adopt Devops
Success Measures(Smart Goals)
• User should be able to play game in
2 clicks
• Scales to - number of users - 10k
• Sprint planning to delivery in 2
weeks
• Hot fix in 1 day

15. Creating Persona (Who are we serving)
Choose a Name
Add an Image
Description
Age:
Occupation:
Gender:
Language Skills:
Marital status:
Tech Savvy:
Personality:Extrovert/Introver
t
Ready for travel:
Income Group:
Challenges/ Frustrations:
What Person values
Financial benefit
Increase productivity
Secured Environment
Access to good Education
Thinks [INSERT- In your particular area of interest, what are the
key thoughts, ideas this persona has?]
Sees INSERT- [In your particular area of interest, what are the
notable observations your persona is making?]
Feels [INSERT- Regarding your particular area of interest,
how do they really feel? What underlying emotions
might be driving their point of view and behavior?]
Does [INSERT- The ‘actuals’. As applicable: What triggers
activity in your area of interest? How often? For how
long? How much money?]

16. Personas
Shaila the novice
Chess Player
Details
● Is a student
● Has tablet
● Knows only basic
rules of chess
● Influenced by
friends
● Need Parent
permission for
payment
Challenges
● Not able to know
what mistakes
are made in the
moves
● Don’t know the
rules
Value
● Learning tricks
● Able to improve the
game based on my
plays
● Compete with friends
Common values
1. Simplicity
2. Fast
3. Personalized

17. Goals of the Personas
(Persona)
Shaila the
novice
chess player
Goal: Play Game
View Saved
Games

18. Story Map - Day in the life of a chess game (for Goal - Play Chess Game)
(Persona)
Shaila the
novice
chess player
Goal: Play Chess Game
Activities/Task Login Select level
Select
Opponent
Start Game
Google Login
Facebook
Login
System
Player
Technical Story - Teach system to learn
from games(Machine learning)Technical Story -
Define the high level
architecture
Select Color
Technical Story -
Define the tools for
CI/CD
Select
Manually
Decide
based on
system
ranking
Application
to decide
based on
play
Select
Opponent style
Aggressive
Defensive
Select
Manually
Default to
white

19. Story Map - Day in the life of a chess game (for Goal - Play Chess Game)
(Persona)
Shaila the
novice
chess player
Goal: Play Chess Game
Activities/Task Login Select level
Select
Opponent
Start Game
Google Login
Facebook
Login
System
Player
Select Color
Select
Opponent style
Aggressive
Defensive
Do we need this
for novice chess
persona
Select
Manually
Decide
based on
system
ranking
Application
to decide
based on
play
Select
Manually
Default to
white

20. Story Map - Day in the life of a chess game (for Goal - Play Chess Game)
(Persona)
Shaila the
novice
chess player
Goal: Play Chess Game
Activities/Task Login Select level
Select
Opponent
Start Game
Google Login
Facebook
Login
System
Player
Select Color
Select
Opponent
style
Aggressive
Defensive
We can eliminate
this step by
identifying the
level as user
play
Select
Manually
Decide
based on
system
ranking
Application
to decide
based on
play
Select
Manually
Default to
white

21. Story Map - Day in the life of a chess game (for Goal - Play Chess Game)
(Persona)
Shaila the
novice
chess player
Goal: Play Chess Game
Activities/Task Login Select level
Select
Opponent
Start Game
Google Login
Facebook
Login
System
Player
Technical Story - Teach system to learn
from games(Machine learning)
Technical Story -
Define the high level
architecture
Select Color
Technical Story -
Define the tools for
CI/CD
Competitiven
ess
Excited
Nervous
Select
Manually
Decide
based on
system
ranking
Application
to decide
based on
play
Select
Manually
Default to
white

22. Story Map - Choosing the initial flow for Demonstration
(Persona)
Shaila the
novice
chess player
Goal: Play Chess Game
Activities/Task Login Select level
Select
Opponent
Start Game
Google Login
Facebook
Login
System
Player
Technical Story - Teach system to learn
from games(Machine learning)Technical Story -
Define the high level
architecture
Select Color
Technical Story -
Define the tools for
CI/CD
Select
Manually
Select
Manually
Decide
based on
system
ranking
Application
to decide
based on
play
Default to
white

23. How to build an effective story map
• Generate divergent solutions-
• Ask the team - What else/How Else/ for
each activity
• Use techniques to generate
• Converge Solutions
• Ask the team - “why” for each activity
• Validate every activity with Charter and
Business Goals

24. ...so companies need to update Product/Service on
demand based on the customer feedback and product
analytics
Social Media/
Discussion
Groups
Warranty/Cust
omer Support
Device/Software
Deliver
Feedback,
Product Ideas
Product Returns
product issues
Live Chat
SME
involvement
Software
update
Trainings
Operations
Support
Training
Product
Performance
Usage of featuresDiscover

25. Understand the customer
Engage the team
Learn Continuously
Lets improve our understanding about customer and deliver

26. Thank You