Journey towards being LeanPaul Coia, CTO

Timeline

Original Vision

2006 2010

Customer Research

Young company

Rapidly growth

Sprung leaks

Lots of operational “projects”

Running again

Lots of energy to builds “feature”

Not a lot of retrospection

2011

Growing awareness of new customers

Many possible initiatives

How to choose?

Executive prioritisation

Minor business cases

Planning meeting

Often based on very limited information

Not a lot of retrospection

Reinforced an execution only mindset

Innovation?

Were we making the right choices?

We had limited resources - it had to count

Often encouraged conservative action

Focus on what we already knew (optimisation)

2012 - a new approach

Two teams, broad focus: search and destroy

Social + Discovery

3 month cycle

Now

Multiple cross-functional teams

Short iterative cycles

Teams present Learnings not project milestones

Prioritisation of opportunity areas

Every step is a learning

Need a tempo

Need a direction (not a project plan)

Need good, available information sources

Need to understand experimentation

Need short cycle times - Agile, Continuous Delivery

Final takeaway

Get Build, Measure, Learn right

...but do Customer Development really well