LeanGears Discovery Framework Workshop

leanGears Discovery

What is a Product ?

A Product is not the end goal for users rather it’s a means to do certain activities in real life to fulfill their needs. A Valuable Product is one that helps the end users do those activities easily and willingly. Every Product intends to change the behavior of the end user in one or the other way.

Product

What is Product Discovery?

The Product requirements just don’t come from end users. Moreover, the end user can only help you understand their problems in current way of doing things. One needs to observe what they do, listen to their problems, empathize with them and identify their needs. The buyers and sponsors of the product, of course want more returns on investment. A development team can make use of their technical skills to solve the user problems efficiently. The Product Discovery process is working with all these people to uncover Product Features and the value that they bring. This framework helps in identifying the end user’s behaviors to be changed to support vision and Product Features to support the change.

Who is a Product Owner?

A Product owner is someone who understands the customers who buy the product, end users who use the product and sponsors who invests in the product and collaborates with development team to build the right product to maximize the value of money and time spent by them (Customers, end users and sponsors).Scrum does not prescribe a specific way of discovering requirements and value as discovery process varies widely based on domain. leanGears Discovery framework attempts to give guidance to Product Owner to discover product requirements and identify value.

What is a Discovery Team?

A Product Discovery Team is a group of people who can collaborate with Product Owner and help him/her in the process of product discovery. It should generally consist of representatives of end users, buyers, sponsors and development team. Its quite possible that development team itself can act as discovery team.

What is leanGears Discovery?

leanGears Discovery is a framework developed by Satisha Venkataramaiah and owned by Leanpitch. leanGears Discovery provides five step approach for discovering Product requirements from product vision. It provides a set of tools to -

  • Develop product vision from problem statement
  • Identify end users and translate vision into Product features based on activities that users need to perform to achieve Product Vision
  • Conduct user interviews, develop personas, user journey, identify pain points and develop user stories
  • Prioritize requirements based on user needs, Spilt User stories, Identify MVP, develop product roadmap
  • Identify Business Value, Size requirements, prioritize based on ROI, add details, develop wireframes, validate solution

What is Product Discovery?

Activity Purpose Actors Input Output Tools/Technique
Product Envisioning Align all the stakeholders to a common goal PO and Stakeholders Problem/Need Statement Vision Statement Product Box, Elevator Pitch, News Paper Ad, TV ad etc.
Collaborative (Product) Chartering Identify the ecosystem for the product to be successful PO and Stakeholders Vision Statement High Level Deliverables Impact Mapping, Product Canvas
User Research Validate the assumptions about user needs PO and End Users Selected Actors and Deliverables from Impact Map User Stories User Experience Mapping, Interviews, Persona Building
User Story Mapping Map User needs to product features and prioritize the needs PO, Stakeholders and Domain Experts User Stories Product Roadmap based on User Needs Kano Model, MUSCOW, Story Splitting technique, User Story Map etc.
Story Pampering Add details and keep the Product Backlog Ready for Development PO, Stakeholders and Development Team Product Backlog Prioritized Product Backlog ready for Development Wireframes, Planning Poker, Classes of Service, Business Value Estimation Game, Voting etc.

leanGears Discovery – Training Agenda

The techniques can be little overwhelming for the participants to grasp. So we will be picking a simple project that everyone can connect and apply these techniques on the project to learn the techniques better by doing.

Day 1: Why and what do we build?

Product Envisioning

  • Why do we need Vision? - Learn the consequences of developing a Product without vision
  • How to develop Product Vision
    • Developing a Product Video
    • Elevator Pitch to Shark Tank
    • News Paper Advertisement
    • Designing Product Brochure etc
  • Review examples of good Product Vision

Product Chartering

  • How to identify all the users of the Product
  • Identify the user activities that Product will support
  • Identify the product features that help the end users to perform the activities willingly
  • Develop impact stories for the Product
  • Learn to develop Product Canvas

User Research

  • Learn why User Research is important and how it pays off
  • Learn different ways of conducting User Research and apply on class project
    • Observe users at their native place
    • Conduct interviews and surveys
    • Lean Startup approach
  • Learn and develop User Experience Map for the class Project
  • Learn and Develop User Personas for the class Project.
  • Learn to develop User Stories out of User Experience Map

Day 2: How do we build Product?

Story Mapping

  • Learn and translate user voice from User Research into Product Features.
  • Learn why Splitting features into smaller deliverables are a necessity.
  • Learn various splitting techniques
  • Learn to prioritize the features based on user needs
    • Kano Model
    • Importance vs satisfaction
    • MUSCOW Technique
  • Create an hypothesis to conduct Value Hypothesis
  • Identify MVP and decide what kind of MVP to go with

Story Pampering

  • Learn and identify functional dependencies
  • Learn different techniques for identifying Business Value for Product Features and practice them on class Project
  • User Voting
  • Factor of Acquisition and Retention
  • Business Value Estimation Game
  • Learn to prioritize Product Features based on Business Value
  • Value vs Cost
  • Cost of Delay
  • Learn to identify different types of Stakeholders and how to engage them
  • Learn various refinement techniques to help development team understand what needs to be built.
  • Wireframes and Mockups
  • Specification By Example
  • Behavior Driven Development
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