“Agile doesn’t have a brain.” This quote from Bill Scott, ‎VP, Business Engineering and Product Development at PayPal, is provocative for sure, but it spotlights the notion that in most organizations Agile is primarily applied as a downstream engineering approach that isn’t inherently concerned with optimizing product design and user experience, the determinants of value to the customer. The learning cycles that form the basis of Scrum are focused on verification and validation of user needs as they are already identified in the backlog’s user stories, but provide little guidance on how to translate organizational goals and customer needs into the backlog’s content and relative priorities in the first place. As a result, the danger persists that Agile teams end up very efficiently building products that implement an incomplete and subjective perception of customers’ wants and needs. This presentation explores how Lean thinking can expand the “inspect and adapt” cycles of Agile development beyond implementation and help to systematically determine which features and design choices really provide the greatest customer value. After a brief introduction to Lean concepts, the presentation discusses how Lean approaches product development as a series of hypotheses about customers’ value perception and builds on Agile’s rapid iterative delivery of working software to test these assumptions. Finally, it highlights ways to derive testable assumptions from organizational goals, such as the Lean UX Hypothesis Statement template and Gojko Adzic’s Impact Mapping.

1. Using
Lean Thinking
to Increase the
Value of Agile
Mathias Eifert

2. • Basic concepts of Lean
• The case of the missing brain
• Closing the value loop
• Implications and take-aways
Agenda
2

3. About Me
3
• Solutions Architect and Consultant
• Applied Lean principles for 15+ years
– Statistical Process Control
– Process Improvement
– Software Development
– Agile Coaching
Mathias.Eifert@excella.com

4. What is Lean?
Toyota Production System

5. What is Lean?
Toyota Production System
Highest quality, lowest cost, shortest lead time

6. • Eliminate waste
• Optimize flow
• Achieve sustainability
Basic Ideas
5

7. Waste
Any non-value added activity in a process
Type 1: Enablers, (currently) required
Type 2: Truly unnecessary

8. The biggest waste?

9. Features That Nobody Wants…
8

10. • Reduce variability of work load
• Limit work in progress
• Optimize the whole value stream
• Minimize lead time
Optimize Flow
9

11. Value Stream Mapping
10
agileweboperations.com
Lead Time

12. • Cross-functional teams
• Team sets pace
• Avoid constant task switching
• Automate manual tasks
• Knowledge work doesn’t scale well
Achieve Sustainability
11

13. HOW
do we get there?

14. Kaizen
14
Change • Good

15. Kaizen
15
Continuous improvement
through rapid, iterative learning.

16. Deming’s PDCA Cycle
16

17. Lean Startup
17

18. Lean Startup
18
Build
MeasureLearn
PERSEVERE
or PIVOT?

19. Lean UX
19

20. Design as
Hypothesis
Lean UX
21
Concept
Prototype
Validate
Internally
Test
Externally
Retrospective

21. How
does Agile
measure
PROGRESS?

22. Working Software

23. • Created by engineers
• No consideration for
– Product management
– Design
– User Experience
Jeff Gotthelf, Author “Lean UX”
Agile Manifesto
24

24. AGILE
doesn’t have a
BRAIN
Bill Scott, ‎VP, Business Engineering and Product Development at PayPal

25. Scrum
30

26. Scrum
31
Requirements
Delivery

27. Scrum
32
Requirements

28. Scrum
33
???

29. Change is Accelerating
27

30. Sense & Respond
Business Agility

31. The Cost of Change
29
Cycle Time

32. Agile is necessary
but not sufficient

33. How
does Lean
measure
PROGRESS?

34. Validated Learning

35. Where is the Value?
33
Features
Outcome User Behavior
Impact Organizational Goals
Output

36. TDD
Build the Right Thing
Build the Thing Right
BML/HDD
ATDD

37. We believe that
• [doing this]
• for [these people]
• will achieve [this outcome].
We’ll know this is true when we see
• [this market feedback].
Jeff Gothelf, Author “Lean UX”
Testable Hypothesis
35

38. Impact Mapping
36
Gojko Adzic, impactmapping.org

39. Lean
45
???

40. Lean
Discovery
Lean
46

41. Lean
Discovery
Lean
48
Measure Impact
Business Agility

42. Not all Software is Equal
40
Process Support Product Development
Uncertainty
Requirements
Unmet Needs
Unrealized Needs

43. When you know
what you need,
building to requirements
works great!

44. When you’re sure you know
exactly what you need,
building to perfect requirements
works great!

45. KEEP
CALM
AND
ACKNOWLEDGE
UNCERTAINTY

46. Uncertainty:
The lack of complete certainty, that is, the existence of
more than one possibility.
Risk:
A state of uncertainty where some of the possibilities
involve a loss, catastrophe, or other undesirable outcome.
Douglas Hubbard, Author “How to Measure Anything”
Risk Management
44

47. Surfacing assumptions
is risk identification.
Validated learning
is active risk mitigation.

48. The Dread Business Case

49. A business case summarizes a set of
assumptions.
These assumptions are usually:
• Hidden
• Unvalidated
The Dread Business Case
47

50. Defer Commitment…
48
… until the last responsible moment

51. Start Small and Lightweight
49
ObserveDesign
Value Proposition Canvas
©Strategyzer AG

52. • Embrace change & uncertainty
• Have conversations about value
• Resist the temptation to fix scope
• Quantify business goals
• Understand hypothesis testing
• Speak the language of UX
• Find lighter-weight tools
Takeaways
50

53. Solve the correct problem
Then solve the problem correctly
Jeffrey L. Taylor

54. ?

55. Thank You!