Managing Product Development Using Lean Framework - Building Organizational Culture

Building Organizational Culture

This is one of the most important elements of the product development process as one adopts lean product development model.  Many executives dictate using lean start-up approach to building new products without attention to the organizational nuances. Based on my experience there are 3-core areas one needs to focus on:

Management Expectation

Product leaders know that managing expectations of the key constituents within the company, such as, sales and marketing, is as important as external entities like customers and analysts. Rush to launch the product and desire to ‘get numbers now’ often leads to expensive mistakes. Adherence to clearly defined metrics holds the key to managing all around expectations. Product leaders are required to remain very objective in processing metrics since confirmed biases of some of the key executives could lead to incorrect interpretation of the feedback. Defining what would constitute a Minimum Viable Product – MVP is the key for a meaningful analysis of the metrics. And, this requires good amount of work with the customers to clearly articulate the value the product would deliver in terms of enabling business outcomes.

In addition, product teams need to gain an agreement on the release process, for example, release early and release often for a validated learning to persevere or pivot. One needs to understand implications for the sales team and existing customers. This requires a good deal of communication, both internally and externally, for all the key constituents.

Defining And Measuring Product Metrics

Clearly defined metrics provide a solid foundation to ensure team alignment in regards to product decisions. Definition of the metrics is dependent upon product maturity. One size does not fit all. Also, it’s equally important that product leaders do not get drowned in the ocean of metrics. A simple set of metrics should be defined which can serve as Dr Apgar Score (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apgar_score) to enable rapid product decisions. Here is a set of metrics for consideration based on product maturity:

1.       Number of new subscribers added.

2.       Velocity of use by the existing customers.

3.       Cohort analysis to assess product adoption following the release of key features/ enhancements.

4.       Changes in win/ loss metrics against competition.

5.       Changes in the Net Promoter Score.

Increasing Product Awareness

Often times, most of the people within the organization do not understand how the product is used by the end-customer. Lack of knowledge of the use case and customer outcomes combined with a poor understanding of what is available today and what is likely to be made available in the future further complicates the overall process of managing expectations, particularly, with sales and marketing teams which are not tracking product development on a day-to-day basis. Product teams need to educate cross functional teams on the use case and business outcomes on a regular basis.  I have seen significant improvements when you train sales and SE teams every week on the new release (assuming you are releasing a new set of features every week).

In addition, establishing a clear Plan-of-Record (PoR) is crucial to increasing product awareness.  PoR can be updated based on validated learning from the market and customer feedback. This helps product development teams (eg. Product management, Product marketing/ SE, Development and QA) to be on the same page. It also allows them to communicate product plans effectively and efficiently to all the stakeholders.