What do we actually know about the problems we are trying to tackle and how we should be tackling them? Is there a process where by we can efficiently discover value and thereby build solutions with confidence? We'll explore these ideas and why the Lean Startup framework as emerged. I welcome skeptics and challengers for a lively discussion!
We are in the midst of a massive transformation of human work into partnerships with machine systems. At the leading edge are people who build those systems and who are reinventing the way they produce value using the concepts embodied in Kanban and Lean. Multiplayer video games represent our most highly evolved forms of human-computer team interaction. Games offer a detailed blueprint for how work can be reconfigured to be more engaging, productive and even deeply satisfying. The ingredients used by great game designers are knowable and can be assembled to complement and greatly enhance the transformation envisioned in Lean software and systems approaches. These benefits require that game ideas be deployed in ways that individual workers (players) see as legitimately satisfying their interests and those of the enterprise’s epic story.
If there is one certainty about large-scale organizational transformation it is to expect uncertainty. Kanban provides an alternate approach to traditional, big-bang change. But even a Kanban change initiative is guaranteed to provide a highly unpredictable outcome.
Eric Ries definition of a startup is as follows:
"A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty."
By this definition, an enterprise Kanban change initiative could be deemed a startup, one that could take advantage of Lean Startup techniques.
During this session I will present a case study on how a team of Kanban change agents leveraged the Lean Startup approach to enable validated learning on a large scale organizational transformation.
I'll discuss how we tested the assumptions behind our transformation through the successful rollout of Minimum Viable Changes (MVCs). I will showcase how we cycled through the learn, build, and measure loop to steer the course of our transformation. Finally, I'll give an overview of our key pivot/pursue decisions, and describe how the lean startup approach provided us with the feedback required to make several significant changes in direction during the course of the transformation.
Traditional management has failed. To deal with a radically different marketplace and workplace, today the whole organization must be focused on creating a stream of additional value to customers through continuous innovation and delivering it sooner. In short, delight the customer. This reinvention of management reflects in part an application of Agile/Scrum thinking to the whole organization.
Drawing on his award-winning book, The Leader's Guide to Radical Management (Jossey-Bass, 2010), Steve Denning shows how the reinvention of management involves five fundamental shifts in terms of the firm’s goal, the role of managers, the way work is coordinated, the shift from value to values and the shift in communications shift from command to conversation.
In my efforts of bringing Continuous Improvement to the sales and marketing arena, I have found the ability to share and create knowledge with your customer has become the strongest marketing tool possible. The Business901 Podcast has allowed me to be at the leading edge of some of the latest thinking. Find out in my presentation how Service Design, Design Thinking, Appreciative Inquiry, Lean Standard Work and the Customer Value Plugin for the Business Model Canvas are being applied to Lean.
