Pushing through failure

(quickly)@jeremyjohnson

@jeremyjohnson

(yes, we’re hiring)

https://twitter.com/SebastianMourra/status/401066297414676480/photo/1

http://gapingvoid.com/2012/07/03/fail-often/

“fail fast” is actually better

framed as “experiment fast.” The most effective innovators

succeed through experimentation.

http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/fail-fast-fail-often-an-interview-with-victor-lombardi/

- Victor Lombardi

http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/artofthestamp/SubPage%20table%20images/artwork/athletics/Vince%20Lombardi/vincelambardi.htm

http://uxmag.com/articles/book-excerpt-why-we-fail

“fail fast”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson

Freeman Dyson

Freeman John Dyson FRS is an English American

theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for

his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-

state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering.

“Say something about failure in experiments or businesses

or anything else. What's the value of failure?”

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.02/dyson.html?pg=7&topic=

1998

“You can't possibly get a good technology going without an

enormous number of failures. It's a universal rule. If you look at

bicycles, there were thousands of weird models built and tried before

they found the one that really worked. You could never design a bicycle theoretically. Even now,

after we've been building them for 100 years, it's very difficult to understand just why a bicycle works - it's even difficult to

formulate it as a mathematical problem. But just by trial and error,

we found out how to do it, and the error was essential. The same is

true of airplanes.”

“So you're saying just go ahead and try stuff and you'll sort out the

right way.”

“That's what nature did. And it's almost always true in technology. That's why computers never really took off

until they built them small.”

“Why is small good?”

“Because it's cheaper and faster, and you can make many more. Speed is the most important thing - to be able to try something out on a small scale quickly.”

!“Fail fast.”

“Yes. These big projects are guaranteed to fail because you never have time to fix everything.”

1998

Failing fast = learning with customers quickly

https://twitter.com/davidakoontz/status/402896347470110721

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/05/13/has-instagram-become-too-risque/

Systrom, Intuit founder Scott Cook, and Lean Startup author Eric Ries talked about the changes that have swept through product development in both big and small organizations. Many companies have moved from what's called "waterfall development" -- a method that relies on large engineering executing a carefully mapped-out plan -- to "lean" development, where creators move quickly to push out products and revise them on the fly. !"We thought about what we could do to iterate more quickly," Systrom said of Burbn's pivot. "People loved posting pictures on Burbn" -- so that's where they took the venture, jettisoning other planned features. Burbn now lives on only as an abandoned Twitter feed.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/13/technology/startups/instagram_burbn/

$

ready?to avoid a slow fail?

Can’t get started?

- problem -

!

!

Ship often. Ship lousy stuff, but ship. Ship constantly.

http://99u.com/tips/6249/Seth-Godin-The-Truth-About-Shipping

Spend too much time planning?

DOn’t talk with your customers?

Find it hard to strip out what’s not valuable?

- problem -

http://www.startupvitamins.com/products/startup-poster-the-longer-it-takes-to-develop-the-less-likely-it-is-to-launch

“The timing of long- range plans is screwed up too. You have the most information when you’re doing something, not before you’ve done it. Yet when do you write a plan? Usually it’s before you’ve even begun. That’s the worst time to make a big decision.”

http://37signals.com/rework

Large team

- problem -

Keep your team small. Smaller than that. No team at all if you can help it.

http://99u.com/tips/6249/Seth-Godin-The-Truth-About-Shipping

A throwback to their days with Jeff Bezos at Amazon, projects are assigned to "two pizza teams," groups of engineers small enough for them to be fed on two large pies. "We want the team to be flat and allow everyone to communicate with each other," Rajaraman says.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1811934/walmartlabs-brings-two-pizza-team-startup-culture-walmart-empire

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/17/heres-how-spotify-scales-up-and-stays-agile-it-runs-squads-like-lean-startups/

Only launch x times a year?

Looking for perfection?

Try to jam too much into a product?

- problem -

https://twitter.com/tbisaacs/status/387716257283596288

https://frontdeskhq.com

“Great companies focus on their users and ship great products.”http://www.aaronklein.com/2012/02/why-facebook-is-worth-100-billion/

http://fab.com/inspiration/posters-getting-things-done

http://www.startupvitamins.com/products/startup-poster-stay-focused-and-keep-shipping

http://www.startupvitamins.com/products/startup-poster-done-is-better-than-perfect

“real artist ship”- steve jobs

http://gloriamarie.com/stay-focused-and-keep-shipping

It’s going to cost too much to try

that out.

- problem -

How do we know our customers will want this?

The Wizard Of Oz Techniques For Social Prototyping – You don’t need to build everything at first. You can be the man behind the curtain. Krieger says him and Systrom tested an early version of a feature which would notify you when friends joined the service. Instead of building it out, they manually sent people notifications “like a human bot” saying ‘your friend has joined.’ It turned out not to be useful. “We wrote zero lines of Python, so we had zero lines to throw away.”

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/30/instagram-co-founder-mike-kriegers-8-principles-for-building-products-people-want/

- Mike Krieger, Instagram’s founder

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/30/instagram-co-founder-mike-kriegers-8-principles-for-building-products-people-want/

404 testing

NEW FEATURE X

http://jeremyjohnsononline.com/2012/12/19/answering-the-question-would-they-use-it-before-you-build-it/

http://www.leemunroe.com/lean-product-development-validate-feature-ideas/

It was an MVP (Minimal Viable Product). I skipped a bunch of features I figured I would implement later. First I wanted to see if people would use it and how they would use it.

Implementing user accounts (in Rails) would take me 2 weekends of work; registration, accounts, saving lists, removing lists, tracking, designing screens, edge cases etc.

I didn’t want to spend the time if it turned out no one signed up so I ran an experiment.

I dropped in a link on the top of the page that said “Sign up to save multiple lists.” and tracked the number of clicks it got with Mixpanel.

(...)

http://www.leemunroe.com/lean-product-development-validate-feature-ideas/

http://www.leemunroe.com/lean-product-development-validate-feature-ideas/

What is the cheapest,

fastest way to learn?

“I dropped over $40k when I could have spent $100”

http://boondainc.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/i-dropped-over-40-grand-when-i-could-have-spent-100/

http://www.savourytable.com/2011/05/mothers-day-and-food-truck-or-two.html

valuable !

!

!

Usable

Enjoyable

Enjoyable

Usablevaluable !

!

!

trying to determine what is…

http://marks.dk/the-post-functional-paradigm-why-all-designs-are-compensations-for-telepathy-and-teleportation

http://bhc3.com/2013/10/31/uncover-latent-needs-with-a-simple-question/

http://thereboot.org/blog/2012/02/19/design-research-what-is-it-and-why-do-it/

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/07/laddering-a-research-interview-technique-for-uncovering-core-values.php

http://www.shmula.com/jeff-bezos-5-why-exercise-root-cause-analysis-cause-and-effect-ishikawa-lean-thinking-six-sigma/987/

Why did the associate damage his thumb? !Because his thumb got caught in the conveyor. !Why did his thumb get caught in the conveyor? !Because he was chasing his bag, which was on a running conveyor. !Why did he chase his bag? !Because he placed his bag on the conveyor, but it then turned-on by surprise !Why was his bag on the conveyor? !Because he used the conveyor as a table !So, the likely root cause of the associate’s damaged thumb is that he simply needed a table, there wasn’t one around, so he used a conveyor as a table. To eliminate further safety incidences, we need to provide tables at the appropriate stations or provide portable, light tables for the associates to use and also update and a greater focus on safety training. Also, look into preventative maintenance standard work.

valuable !

!

!

Usable

Enjoyable

latent needs

Racing to the right ideas during development

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

Idea or discovery backlog

The Discovery track is all about quickly generating validated product backlog items, and the Delivery track is all about generating releasable software.

http://www.svproduct.com/dual-track-scrum/

- marty cagan

http://www.sebastiangreger.net/writings/concept-design-in-agile-environment/

Iteration Iteration Iteration Iteration

discovery discovery discovery discovery

Implement Implement Implement Implement

design

build

discovery backlog

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

http://www.kontain.com/plat4m/entries/143623/update-to-our-scrum-board/

prototype

fast rough keep moving

test rough prototypes(usually built within a week or less)

(literally 100s) http://looksgoodworkswell.blogspot.com/2012/11/list-of-mockupprototyping-tools.html

http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/rapid-prototyping-tools#thelist

lab setting - 6 participants

9:30am

10:30am

11:30am !

1:30pm

2:30pm

3:30pm

valuable Usable

Enjoyable !

determine

clicktest / survey / Etc...

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

ideas

x

x

Core team makes decisions

Done!

the core team

...it is collaborative – the product manager, designer and lead engineer are working together, side-by-side, to create and validate backlog items.

http://www.svproduct.com/dual-track-scrum/

- marty cagan

ideas

failed usability failed to understand failed to find value

ideas

ideas

http://www.startupvitamins.com/products/startup-poster-experiment-fail-learn-repeat

ideas

refine retest

ideas

ideas

Ready for development

ideas

ideas

What’s your kill rate? Ship that bad boy!

Did I mention this happens within a week?

(or less)

Get moving!

LEARNLEAN

combined product teams

#1

core product team

product owner

ux designerdevelopers

one ux designer per team

#2

rough, fast, iterative prototyping

#3

Getting in front of customers weekly

#4

build/test/learn

#5

lean, agile, prototyping, shipping,

ux design master.

in no time at all, you too can be a...

http://blog.web2expo.com/2011/08/interview-with-eric-ries-part-2-what%E2%80%99s-next-for-the-lean-startup-movement-startup-visa-and-lessons-learned/

thanks!@jeremyjohnson

www.jeremyjohnsononline.com