Abstract: While developing products, we usually rush through the designing, speccing, and building processes without stopping to analyze if we are building the right things for our customer. We ship feature after feature out the door, and never return to make sure it is solving the problem or hitting our goals. Many Product Management roadmaps and processes don’t even include time to look at existing products and improve them.
The notion of Continuous Improvement has long been encouraged in software development practices, but what about Product Management? If we only improve the development side, we only solve half of the problem. We end up creating really fast and efficient processes to develop products that users end up hating.
In this hands on workshop, we'll learn how to use Continuous Improvement techniques during product development, especially during the discovery phase, to create products that achieve business goals and satisfy user needs. I'll introduce the concept of The Product Kata - a routine that will get your team identifying and solving problems like second nature. Then we'll learn how to put it into practice with an exercise in making "Kata Pizzas" for our customer. We'll wrap up with a discussion on good product strategy that allows the team to focus on learning and experimentation.
Learning Outcomes: - Understand the problems with current Product Management practices that inhibit learning
- Learn the Product Kata technique to adopt continuous learning principles in the team
- Learn how to set effective Product Strategies that allow for experimentation and learning
- Introduction to the Toyota Kata techniques and processes
- Learn how to stop building useless features by taking the time to learn
