kickstart your product backlog with innovation games

Kickstart your Product Backlog

with Innovation Games

#atbru 2013

@FredVandaele

Context

European Commission

"New" domain

Low priority

Limited resources

Many stakeholders

• Operational Units

• Administrative Units

• Financial Service

• Legal Service

• …

Stakeholders

After 6 months, we have …

– Pile of documents

– Pile of diagrams,

– …

… let's do it!

A first « Waterfall » try

And now ladies and gentlemen …

Why it failed?

• No shared vision

• No clear priorities

• Centifugal forces

Let's try it differently!

Innovation Games Playing games is serious!

Innovation here!

To explore and Discover

Source: innovationgames.com

In many cases in life we know what B looks like...

Clear Goal

Fuzzy Goal

In creative work we don’t...

Source: innovationgames.com

The Game universe

Boundaries

Facilitator Observers

Goal

Time + Space

Rules

Players

Artifacts

From ideas to action …

Discover Shape Prioritize Act

Source: innovationgames.com

Shape

What is it made of?

How does it work?

What does that look like?

Game: "Start your day"

To understand When and How Your Customer Uses Your Product

"Describe your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly events related to your use of the product"

Game: "Start your day"

Why it works?

We remember what's just append but we forget what we did in the past …

Memory is activated by context

• A time line of User's needs

• A clear view of the whole process

• Customers shared their needs &

Vision

Output

Some work here …

• We need a simple way to structure our information

• We like stickies on a wall

As an Agile Team, we want to organize our user stories into a Story Maps.

Card Mapping

Prioritize

How can we prioritize?

What to do first?

What to do in the next weeks?

Game: "Buy a feature"

Create a list of features with estimated cost

Distibute money … but not too much ;-)

Customers buy features that they want

Game: "Buy a feature"

Why it works?

Users see the big picture & decide

Priorities emerge from discussion

Ppl negotiate to optimize

Output

A subset of requirements

selected by

stakeholders

A clear Scope

Game : "Prune the product Tree"

Start with a very large tree

Write features on index cards

Place desired features around the tree, defining the next phase of its growth

Game : "Prune the product Tree"

Why it works?

We trend to put our efforts behind the most important features …

… sometimes this means that we put too little effort behind the features that are needed to complete the product

KANO

"Performance" needs

"Basic" needs

Excitement needs or Delighters

Customer Satisfaction

Degree of Implementation

Delight

Immediate happiness

Not unhappy

Disappointed

We have our first MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

& Path of development

Output

Act

How to plan the work?

How to do it now?

And…?

It works !!

1 month: first version is online

6 months: the product is there !

Retrospective

Don't start a product

by the "beginning"

Start by the most valuable stuff!

Retrospective

Identify questions that matter

Retrospective

Use several games,

mix techniques

Retrospective

Prepare, Prepare, Prepare,

Work as a Team

Retrospective

Fun is good for creativity

Activates your Right-brain!

Thanks!

@fredvandaele