The missing manual on how to apply Lean Startup to build products that customers love
The Lean Product Playbook is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice.
The Lean Startup movement has contributed new and valuable ideas about product development and has generated lots of excitement. However, many companies have yet to successfully adopt Lean thinking. Despite their enthusiasm and familiarity with the high-level concepts, many teams run into challenges trying to adopt Lean because they feel like they lack specific guidance on what exactly they should be doing.
If you are interested in Lean Startup principles and want to apply them to develop winning products, this book is for you. This book describes the Lean Product Process: a repeatable, easy-to-follow methodology for iterating your way to product-market fit. It walks you through how to:
Determine your target customers Identify underserved customer needs Create a winning product strategy Decide on your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Design your MVP prototype Test your MVP with customers Iterate rapidly to achieve product-market fit
This book was written by entrepreneur and Lean product expert Dan Olsen whose experience spans product management, UX design, coding, analytics, and marketing across a variety of products. As a hands-on consultant, he refined and applied the advice in this book as he helped many companies improve their product process and build great products. His clients include Facebook, Box, Hightail, Epocrates, and Medallia.
Entrepreneurs, executives, product managers, designers, developers, marketers, analysts and anyone who is passionate about building great products will find The Lean Product Playbook an indispensable, hands-on resource.
By:
Dan Olsen
Imprint: JOHN WILEY
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: 1
Dimensions:
Height: 231mm,
Width: 160mm,
Spine: 31mm
Weight: 522g
ISBN: 9781118960875
ISBN 10: 1118960874
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 22 May 2015
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction: Why Products Fail and How Lean Changes the Game xvii Part I Core Concepts Chapter 1 Achieving Product-Market Fit with the Lean Product Process 3 What Is Product-Market Fit? 3 The Product-Market Fit Pyramid 4 Quicken: from #47 to #1 7 The Lean Product Process 8 Chapter 2 Problem Space versus Solution Space 13 The Space Pen 13 Problems Define Markets 15 The What and the How 16 Outside-In Product Development 16 Should You Listen to Customers? 17 A Tale of Two Apple Features 18 Using the Solution Space to Discover the Problem Space 20 Part II The Lean Product Process Chapter 3 Determine Your Target Customer (Step 1) 25 Fishing for Customers 25 How to Segment Your Target Market 26 Users versus Buyers 28 Technology Adoption Life Cycle 29 Personas 30 Chapter 4 Identify Underserved Customer Needs (Step 2) 37 A Customer Need by Any Other Name 37 Customer Needs Example: TurboTax 38 Customer Discovery Interviews 40 Customer Benefit Ladders 41 Hierarchies of Needs 43 The Importance versus Satisfaction Framework 45 Related Frameworks 56 Visualizing Customer Value 58 The Kano Model 63 Putting the Frameworks to Use 66 Chapter 5 Define Your Value Proposition (Step 3) 67 Strategy Means Saying “No” 68 Value Propositions for Search Engines 68 Not So Cuil 71 Building Your Product Value Proposition 72 Skating to Where the Puck Will Be 75 The Flip Video Camera 75 Predicting the Future with Value Propositions 75 Chapter 6 Specify Your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Feature Set (Step 4) 77 User Stories: Features with Benefits 78 Breaking Features Down 79 Smaller Batch Sizes Are Better 79 Scoping with Story Points 80 Using Return on Investment to Prioritize 80 Deciding on Your MVP Candidate 85 Chapter 7 Create Your MVP Prototype (Step 5) 89 What Is (and Isn’t) an MVP? 89 MVP Tests 90 The Matrix of MVP Tests 92 Qualitative Marketing MVP Tests 93 Quantitative Marketing MVP Tests 94 Qualitative Product MVP Tests 99 Quantitative Product MVP Tests 108 Chapter 8 Apply the Principles of Great UX Design 111 What Makes a Great UX? 111 The UX Design Iceberg 116 Conceptual Design 117 Information Architecture 120 Interaction Design 123 Visual Design 129 Design Principles 135 Copy Is Also Part of UX Design 140 The A-Team 140 UX Is in the Eye of the Beholder 141 Chapter 9 Test Your MVP with Customers (Step 6) 143 How Many Customers Should I Test With? 144 In-Person, Remote, and Unmoderated User Testing 145 How to Recruit Customers in Your Target Market 148 User Testing at Intuit 152 Ramen User Testing 153 How to Structure the User Test 155 How to Ask Good Questions 156 Ask Open versus Closed Questions 158 I Feel Your Pain 159 Wrapping Up the User Test 160 How to Capture and Synthesize User Feedback 161 Usability versus Product-Market Fit 163 Chapter 10 Iterate and Pivot to Improve Product-Market Fit 167 The Build-Measure-Learn Loop 167 The Hypothesize-Design-Test-Learn Loop 168 Iterative User Testing 170 Persevere or Pivot? 175 Chapter 11 An End-to-End Lean Product Case Study 181 MarketingReport.com 181 Step 1: Determine Your Target Customers 182 Step 2: Identify Underserved Needs 182 Step 3: Define Your Value Proposition 183 Step 4: Specify Your MVP Feature Set 185 Step 5: Create Your MVP Prototype 187 Step 6: Test Your MVP with Customers 188 Iterate and Pivot to Improve Product-Market Fit 193 Reflections 197 Part III Building and Optimizing Your Product Chapter 12 Build Your Product Using Agile Development 201 Agile Development 201 Scrum 205 Kanban 211 Picking the Right Agile Methodology 216 Succeeding with Agile 218 Quality Assurance 222 Test-Driven Development 225 Continuous Integration 226 Continuous Deployment 227 Chapter 13 Measure Your Key Metrics 229 Analytics versus Other Learning Methods 229 Oprah versus Spock 231 User Interviews 231 Usability Testing 232 Surveys 232 Analytics and A/B Testing 235 Analytics Frameworks 236 Identify the Metric That Matters Most 240 Retention Rate 242 The Equation of Your Business 249 Achieving Profitability 255 Chapter 14 Use Analytics to Optimize Your Product and Business 259 The Lean Product Analytics Process 259 A Lean Product Analytics Case Study: Friendster 263 Optimization with A/B Testing 272 Chapter 15 Conclusion 277 Acknowledgments 283 References 285 Resources 287 Index 291 About the Author 309
DAN OLSEN is an entrepreneur, consultant, and Lean product expert. He works with CEOs and product leaders to build great products and strong product teams, often as interim VP of Product. Dan's clients include Facebook, Box, Hightail, Medallia, Financial Engines, and One Medical Group. At Intuit, Dan led the Quicken product team to record sales and profit. He also led product management at social networking pioneer Friendster and was cofounder and CEO of TechCrunch award winner YourVersion, a personalized news startup. A frequent speaker at business and technology events, Dan lives in Silicon Valley where he hosts the Lean Product Meetup. For more information visit www.leanproductplaybook.com
