Beautiful city, beautiful mountain.
I’m thrilled to announce the next event we, at Neo, are putting on this fall. Lean Day: West will take place September 16-17, 2013 in the gorgeous city of Portland, OR.
Building off the momentum of Lean Day: UX, held back on March 1st, 2013 in NYC, this event is expanded to 2 days and will offer workshops and talks about practicing lean startup in the enterprise.
I will be speaking on working and designing with distributed teams at this year’s IA Summit in Baltimore, MD.
As the author of a book on collaboration – a book that touts the benefits of collocated teams – the reality of distributed teams is not lost on me. In fact one of the main questions I get asked each time I present on Lean UX is how to make it work with remote teams. While the benefits of in-person collaboration and communication are clear, it doesn’t mean they can’t be achieved with remote colleagues.
There’s been no shortage of coverage lately about the different strategies companies employ when it comes to their distributed work force. Certain companies, like Automattic – makers of WordPress, have an entirely remote workforce and swear it’s the only way to work. Other companies, like Yahoo!, have made headlines recently when CEO Marissa Mayer demanded all remote employees come back to the office. LivingSocial has promoted a distributed team environment under the leadership of now-departed SVP of Technology Chad Fowler. The poster children for distributed teams, 37 Signals, swear by this approach to the point that they’ve written a book on the topic. What has been missing from the conversation to date is context – the context of the work these companies are doing and the context of their current environments.
Let’s look a little deeper.
Lean UX – the book!
It is with great excitement that I announce the launch of the Lean UX book. We’ve talked about it for a long time (close to 18 months) and it’s finally a reality. Read this book! It will cover:
And then, after you read it, please review the book on Amazon.
Huge thanks to my co-author Josh Seiden for taking on this project with me.
Let me know what you think.
And here is a great review of the Lean UX book by Kevin Kauzlaric – The Best Business Books for Entrepreneurs.
[Jeff]
Transitioning teams to be more “lean” in their product development is not easy. This is especially true in larger, more established organizations. Years of historical momentum coupled with siloed bureaucracy and overzealous legal departments have entrenched a serial, lengthy process in many banks, insurance companies and other enterprise level orgs. Add to this the relatively late addition of design and ux services and simply declaring, much less actually proving, product hypotheses becomes an organizational impossibility.
Making a list of all of these challenges can be a lengthy endeavor. To spare you that list and to focus this article on challenges with actual solutions I’ve picked three. Again, this is far from a complete list and I encourage you to add your experiences to the discussion in the comments.
Failure is not an option
For Lean UX and Lean Startup to take hold philosophically, your company culture must allow for some level of failure. Declaring hypotheses carries an implicit admission from the product development team that they don’t know if a problem statement is true and if their proposed solution will work. To find out they will need to experiment. Experiments will fail. Management needs to be comfortable with teams learning by failing. The failures will come regardless of process. By experimenting early, your team mitigates the costs sunk into a particular solution.
If you’re facing this challenge here’s what you can do:
1. Communicate with your manager regularly. Let her know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, what it will cost, how long it will take and what you expect to learn from your experiment. Explain how you will mitigate legal and brand risks. Invite her to participate in your testing sessions. Most important is to share your learnings as soon as you have them. By keeping your manager informed you reduce their anxiety. By regularly communicating progress you’re letting them know work is getting done.
2. Crunch the numbers. Show your manager the cost of fully executing the current, unproven plan. Then show the cost of validating those hypotheses. The drastically lower cost of early failure always helps build support for Lean UX.
Your company manages to outputs, not outcomes
Many companies build lists of features and then task teams with building those lists. When the features launch, the team is rewarded for completing their work. No reward is given for the feature actually solving a business problem – only for deployment.
Lean thinking pushes us to seek the business outcome we seek to create with our feature sets and then question whether these features will get us there.
To overcome output-focused management in your org realign conversations with your stakeholders around what metric you’re trying to move with the current feature roadmap. Discuss how confident the company is that these features will actually achieve that goal. If confidence is low, ask your stakeholders to challenge your team with moving that metric. Let the team figure out which features move that metric and use the communication tactics mentioned above to keep managers at bay.
IMPORTANT: the metric you task your team with must be an outcome they can move as opposed to global corporate impacts (think reduction in shopping cart abandons as opposed to “revenue”).
Silos
Lean UX thrives on cross-functional collaboration. Silos destroy this. Enterprise level organizations often have entrenched silos that lock disciplines and business units within their own walls. Crossing these boundaries often brings cries of “that’s not my job” or the opposite, “isn’t that their job?” The truth is that it’s everyone’s job to build great products. Many of the skills your teams possess go untapped because they reach beyond their job title and ultimately their silo.
To get past this you’ll need a bit of stealth maneuvering. This is a situation that requires asking for forgiveness as opposed to permission. If you can find a few like-minded colleagues from other disciplines, grab them and put together a small skunkworks effort to tackle an annoying problem the business has. It doesn’t have to be big – just enough to show what a motivated, cross-functional team can get done in a short amount of time.
Showcase your success to your managers. Tell them how you were able to get all of this done so quickly. Prove the power of silo-busting by showing it’s accomplishments.
These are not small problems and the tactics here will only get you started overcoming them. What challenges have you had? How have you tried (successfully or not) to get past them?
Share your feedback in the comments.
[Jeff]
P.S. – to learn how others in this position have implemented Lean UX in the enterprise consider attending Lean Day: UX – 9 amazing speakers will share their insight on this exact topic.
It’s January 2013 – the month and year I turn 40. I’m not one to get hung up on age. In fact I’m a big believer in that old saying that you’re only as old as you feel. I feel 18 – with (nearly) 22 years of experience. But this one feels different. Maybe it’s because at one point in my life 40 was something my parents and their friends were – a lifetime away. Maybe it’s because there’s so much delineation of value at 40.
Example: the job boards (where I have a little bit of experience) will tell you that job hunting is much harder when you’re 40.
Another: marketers find you less “coveted” even though I have more “disposable” income (hate that phrase) now than at any other point in my life.
Maybe, for me, it’s because I got a late start in my current profession. I spent a good chunk of the 90′s trying to be a professional touring musician. I kept shitty day jobs to pay the bills until the steam ran out of both bands I was in. How much further would I be now, if at all, if I’d used those years at a “real” job? I ask myself that question a lot.
The truth is that I’d never trade those experiences for anything. They are some of my fondest memories and where I made my best friends – friends I’ve kept to this day. Nothing builds bonds quite like driving through middle America in the dead of winter, on the way to yet another show where (hopefully) 30 people would show up, in a 20 year old van with no heat, a constantly failing engine and a hole in the driver’s floorboard requiring the driver to wear an extra boot to keep his foot from getting frostbite. Glamorous. 
Which brings me back to 2012. It was a year filled with amazing personal and professional achievements. I quit my job! Holy shit that was scary. I started my own company. Holy shit that was scary. I started teaching and training more than I’ve ever done in my life. Holy sh…well…you get the idea.
I wrote a book too. I can’t wait to actually see the physical product.
The irony of 2012 is that my dreams of world tours are now coming true – in the form of public speaking, book events and teaching. I never saw that coming. With gigs (as I still like to call them) spanning India, Asia, Europe and all over the US I’ve gotten to see the world in ways I only thought I would much later in life. Thanks for coming to see me “play.”
On the personal side 2012 has been a roller coaster of emotion with the continually growing beauty of our daughters etching permagrins into our cheeks coupled with the crushing tragic loss of my wife’s brother – something we’re still coming to grips with.
When I turned 30 I wrote a blog post assessing things up to that point. I’ll dig to find it (long lost blog) and post a link so I can assess my progress against 30 year old me. I think he’d be proud.
UPDATE: I found that blog post I wrote when I was 30. It cracked me up.
I’m excited for 2013. There’s a ton of potential on the horizon. Lots of folks have supported me in the last few years. Thank you for that. It means everything to me.
I hope you’ll continue to join me here, Twitter (assuming it continues to be relevant and in the real world as we build new products, companies and ideas together.
[Jeff]
I’m very proud to announce the launch of Lean Day: UX – a one day, single track Lean UX conference taking place on March 1st, 2013 in New York City. Continuing on the success of this year’s Agile UX NYC, we’ve put together a program that dives deeper in to Lean UX tactics and how to make them work, specifically, in the enterprise.
The speakers we’ve lined up represent some of the biggest and most successful companies in the world and the case studies they’ll present will offer tactics, tips and tricks to introducing greater cross-functional collaboration in your organization. At next year’s conference we have the following folks speaking:
Andrew Crow from GE
Stacey Gutman from Amex
Farrah Bostic from The Difference Engine
Lionel Mohri from Intuit
Bill Scott from PayPal
David Panarelli from LivingSocial
Tom Illmensee from SnagAJob
In the afternoon we have Melissa Keene and Christina Goldschmidt from Annalect taking the entire conference through a Lean UX Hackathon workshop. The ideas, skills and methods the morning speakers will share will be put into use that afternoon. It’s shaping up to be a great day.
Lean UX is not just for startups. Lean Day: UX will teach you how to bring these ideas into your practice and start making the process and cultural shifts necessary for them to stick.
I hope you’ll join us in NYC on March 1, 2013 for this great conference. It will be the first of a series of Lean Day events with each one focusing on a different discipline.
The web site for the event is www.leandayux.com — click through to see the full descriptions of the talk, location and ticket purchasing options.
It’s worth noting that we’ve got a limited number of early bird tickets. When they sell out, the price will go up to the “regular bird” rate. Join us! It’s going to be a great day.
[Jeff]
I’m thrilled to share that Proof, the product design studio we (Giff Constable, Josh Seiden) founded earlier this year has been acquired by New Context. Starting immediately, we will be the NYC office of New Context offering a full array of innovation, design and development services. We’ve spent the last year working with businesses big and small figuring out how to get their best ideas to market and prove that the ideals behind lean startup and lean ux can work in many environments. With the world-class development chops of the New Context organization, we’ll be able to bring these approaches to a much broader audience.
As much as this feels like the end of a process, it’s actually just the beginning. I’m very excited about what the future holds for our new company.
[Jeff]
Make that connection...
“I don’t really use LinkedIn or Twitter.”
“I don’t go to meetups.”
“I don’t really have time to meet people.”
These are just a few of the phrases I hear all the time from people I come across — whether they’re in tech or otherwise. And it shocks me.
I have long lost count of how many business connections, opportunities, jobs, professional acquaintances, referrals and just plain friends I’ve made through both social and real-life networking. To this day, I maintain the philosophy of taking every meeting. Sometimes they’re in person and sometimes they’re over Skype. Sometimes they’re just email conversations. But the connection is made.
Even if we don’t talk again for a year or if we never talk again, we’ve both gained something. And you never know where that little connection may lead. So take that call. Return that email. Schedule that coffee and accept that invitation. You won’t regret it.
[Jeff]
Quick update on the next blog post(s) coming up here. I’ve been swamped with launching a new business, speaking around the world, writing for a few other publications and putting the finishing touches on the Lean UX book. This has kept my blogging down to a minimum over the past few months.
Fear not, I’ve got a stable of great ideas that are just begging for a write-up and I hope to have another post up here in the next couple of weeks.
In the meantime, please check out my two latest articles over at Harvard Business Review and Johnny Holland.
And if you haven’t yet pre-ordered the Lean UX book you can do so here.
Also, if you have a great idea for a blog topic here please don’t hesitate to let me know.
Thanks!
[Jeff]
The almighty microphone at The Great IxDA Debate
Back in February I was lucky enough to attend Interaction 12, the IxDA’s annual conference, in Dublin, Ireland. It was an incredibly well-produced event with lots of thoughtful sessions, interesting people and fun activities. One of those activities was the inaugural Great IxDA Debate. I was lucky enough to be a part of that debate. The brainchild of SapientNitro’s Dan Willis (aka @uxcrank), the debate put a bunch of interaction designers, creative directors and information architects on stage, in a bar, debating some fundamental questions of the interaction design profession – as the Guinness flowed.
Dave Malouf debating with Abby Covert looking on
Joining me on stage was a formidable (some would say motley) crew of folks from a variety of backgrounds and countries. The debaters included Andrea Resmini, Dave Malouf, Boon Yew Chew, Jason Mesut (my team mate), Pete Trainor, Abby Covert, Giles Colborne and Kieron Leppard (arguably the best name ever). We were paired up into teams of two and each foursome took on a divisive argument about the merits and roles of interaction design. Dan did a fantastic job, not just picking questions that were sure to get a spirited discussion, but also MC’ing the event and keeping things rolling all the while involving the crowd in the discussion as well.
Me, at the podium, debating....
The statement Jason and I debated was, “Interaction design is not a well-respected design profession.” Our job was to argue for the statement. You can imagine what it felt like to get up in front of a room of half-in-the-bag interaction designers and tell them their profession was suffering from a lack of respect. :-/
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