Outcomes are success criteria. And when we have objective
success criteria, it allows us to measure progress on our product
initiatives. So the question then becomes what is progress and that
definition is Shifting, as we move towards a more
continuous world. So when in the in the manufacturing of goods,
progress is the creation of those high-quality Goods. Did you produce the
t-shirt that you produce the phone? Yes, we did. That's the measure of progress
in an agile environment. Working software is the measure of
progress. At the end of the iteration, did you deliver working
code? If you did you've made progress?
In The Lean Startup world. The measure of progress is validated learning,
did you go through the build measure learn Loop and learn
something from the market that advanced your progress on
your project? Yes. Then you're making progress with lean
ux we focus on outcomes and then ultimately impact but
really the key is outcomes as a measure of progress and as a
fundamental difference between output outcome
and impact
Output is the software that we build. It's the features that we
produce and it's very easy to measure.
Did you launch the new login screen? Yes I did. Yes we did! There it is.
It's easy to measure. It's a binary thing. Outcome
is the change. We want to see in the world after we deliver
the output.
And that's a lot harder to measure primarily because many organizations simply
don't set themselves up to measure the things they'd like to know after
they've launched a set of features.
Outcomes. Could be an increase in signups and increase in form,
completion rates and increase in applications for a mortgage.
That's a change in customer Behavior. Now the third thing we're
talking about here is impact. Impact is the change. We see over time
and it's a high-level metric. That's very hard to attribute to
a specific feature or widget or products. It's
its measurements like revenue or net promoter score. Well, there are many
many things that feed into revenue or net promoter score and it's
tough to attribute a specific feature or
product that
Changed those measures, those impact level measures for the better.
And so, what we want to do is we want to focus our efforts on outcomes that we can
measure and a tribute to the work that we're
creating as a team. So for example, an output
could be a new login page.
That's a feature that we've created the outcome. Could
be that users of this page login at a higher success rate. That
is our success criteria. That's how we know this was the right
thing to do. And the right implementation of that idea is that we see a higher
success rate in logging in. Now, the impact of that could be an
increase in sales, but lots of things affect increase in sales. It
could be a new product, it could be new pricing scheme. It could be the availability of a
very popular product that wasn't available.
Well, for a while. And so, it's difficult to attribute, a new, login
page to an increase in sales. And so, what we want to do is we want to
tasks are teams with an outcome to achieve
increase, the success rate at which users login.
And then let them figure out which output, which
features will achieve those outcomes and that's the
change in behavior that we want to measure. And when you give teams the freedom
to decide what to implement, and how to best,
Achieve a business goals, you get the best product straight from the principles behind the agile,
Manifesto you give teams the autonomy and the empowerment to come up
with their own Solutions.
They self-organize, and they own those Solutions and inevitably the best architectures,
the best requirements, the best designs emerge from these self-organizing teams.
And So based on our challenge for Neo calling we've articulated our assumptions around personas
we have two personas, the next thing we'd like to do is
articulate the outcomes the success criteria that
we want to see if we that will help us determine whether or not we're building the right
product. What is the change in behavior that we hope to achieve
with our personas?
That will help us assess whether or not Neo the features that we've chosen for Neo
calling and the implementation with the right choices to make.
And so this next exercise is a is a
brainstorming exercise that will allow you as a team to
individually brainstorm first, a series of ideas and then come together
around themes for Success criteria.
Okay, so what I'd like you to do, we're going to have a brainstorming exercise. And this brainstorming
exercise is called Affinity mapping sometimes lovingly known
as the dump and sort. And what I'd like you to do is you need a Post-It
note pad and a thick Sharpie. So all of you should have a Post-It note pad
and a thick Sharpie quick question. Why we use the small posted
notes and the thick Sharpies for this? Any thoughts on
that keeps the number of words, small, the keeps it limits you to the
amount of content that you can put
Needs posted. And the second reason with a thick Sharpies
is that you can see it from a distance. So as you're as you're as you're sharing these Post-it
notes with your colleagues, everyone can read it. Either way, you put it up on a wall
or whether you put it up on, on a table to share with your colleagues. So this exercise
is time boxed and time boxing is critical as we saw in the Nordstrom video.
Well, how do we know we're done? We're done when we run out of time and so we time box, all of our exercises. Now for the
sake of the workshop, this is going to be a fairly short time box of six minutes.
It's and the question that I'd like you to answer is what key performance
indicators, metrics and measures.
Will determine the success of our product or project.
What do we, what change in Behavior? Do we want to see in the
users of Neo calling specifically the users that we
created in this case, Mike and Jane
that will indicate to us that they're using the product that they like the
product and that they're going to continue to use that product. If,
for example, things you can measure things like an increase in the number of completed
calls.
That would tell you that a, they're using the product and be, the people are actually picking up on the other end.
That's an, it's a good indication that something good is happening. Perhaps, it's a decrease in the number of customer
service calls, that means we've created a simple enough experience
where our customers are not getting hung up on it. So what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to think about
things that we can measure changes in Behavior.
In our Target, customers that would indicate to us.
That our product is hitting the mark, I'd like you to write one idea per post
of note.
I'll give you six minutes to come up with as many as you can working individually.
Okay.
Begin.
So, that's time.
The next step in our exercise is to organize, our brainstorm into
themes. And so what we're going to do is we're going to come up over here to the to the
easels and we're going to bring our posted notes with us.
And we're going to organize our posted notes into themes.
So, grab your Post-it notes.
Come on up.
Come on up to the easels over here.
And what I'd like each of you to do is, I'd like all of you to put your Post-it notes up on the easels wherever you'd like to put them and
then read them off to each other and then organize them into themes that make
sense. So inevitably there's there's some theming and some clustering that's going to happen
in a team. And so the fastest way to do is is for everyone to come up here,
put your Post-it notes up on the wall.
And then, once everyone's is up on the wall, read them to each other one at a time and sort them into
themes and then give your themes a name, you could Circle them with a marker and give them a name.
But the goal is to see what kind of themes you've come up with as a team around
your success metrics.
Okay, so what we've got.
Very, very quickly is a set of themes around how we think, we will be able to
measure success about some of her ideas. So now we've got, we've got
two out of the three components of our hypothesis written. We've got our
personas and we've got our outcome themes. Let's have a seat and we'll talk about the
last component.
Which is features.
So the last component is features and features are the
things that we make for our customers, that will
achieve our outcomes that will achieve this change in
Behavior. What are the things that we can make for
Mike and for Jane using them as filters?
That will help us achieve our outcomes. So as you're thinking about features,
keep in mind, the personas that we've come up with and keep in mind the outcomes that we're
trying to achieve and that will help ultimately filter
out. Features, the don't work for these personas in changing
their behavior towards our stated goals. The exercise that we're going to do
four features is identical to the exercise that we just did
for outcomes. We're going to use our thick Sharpies.
And our small Post-It note pads. With the question. We're going to consider
this time is what features will serve our users
and create our desired outcomes. For example, visual
address book a photo based address book, right? For Grandpa Mike.
That might be a good way to go. Call the grandkid, call the other grandkid,
Financial incentive for completed calls if Grandpa, Mike is trying to convince his grandkids to pick up
the phone, maybe they get paid every time they pick up the phone.
Those my our goal is to drive these outcomes and to
get these users to change the way that they behave with our product.
What features will get us there. I'm going to give you six minutes
again to come up with as many features as you can one feature per
post it note and then we'll sort them again into themes after that ready
Begin. And if at any time you need to get up and look at the features or the outcomes are
the outcomes or the personas. Please feel free.
Six minutes to come up with as many features as you can.
Okay, that's time. Now what we're going to do is the same thing we did with our
outcomes. We're going to take our posted notes. We're going to come over
to the easel pads.
We're going to put everything up on the wall, and we're going to
read it to each other and organized into themes. So, we get a sense of where we
stand together as a team.
I'm some of these ideas.
So, come on up.
Bring your Post-it notes. Put them up on the easel pad, everybody. Put them up first.
And then read them to each other and organized into themes.