Stakeholders and Customers

• shift towards building teams that are more aligned with customers: from ancillary to central
• sense & respond
  • tools, techniques, & practices for Organizations to listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously
• 3 Key Tactics for Scrum Teams to Connect with Customers

  • Most companies and Scrum teams fail to understand what it takes to connect with their customers, what they need, and what matters most to them

  • 3 keys:

  • A. Product Discovery: MVP Exercise

    • validate whether the product is feasible, usable, and valuable by defining and testing using an MVP
    • Feasible: The development team must be capable of building it
    • Usable: customers must be able to use it
    • Valuable: the product itself must deliver value to customers, so they want to buy it
    • This allows Scrum teams to explore the product feasibility and helps them to decide which features to cut and which to leave in. Once a minimal product is chalked out, a prototype can be built and tested with actual users to validate if it is usable and valuable
    • Model to create MVP: Story Map exercise
      • GOAL LEVEL: Summary, Functional, Sub-Functional
      • Users, BACKBONE: Activities and Tasks, RELEASE SLICES: with set of User Tasks (also called Stories) (detailed) per Release / Narrative
      • Process:
        • 1. Frame
          • What, who, why
        • 2. Map the Big Picture
          • Users, BACKBONE and High-Level User Tasks
        • 3. Explore
          • Fill the body of the Story Map (User Tasks, Details
        • 4. Slice Out Viable Releases
          • 1. Slice into holistic releases
          • 2. For each Release, name the target Outcomes & Impact (Goals)
          • 3. For each Release, identify Product Success Metrics
        • 5. Slice Out a Development Strategy
          • 1. Slice the 1st release into 3 or more delivery phases
          • 2. Opening Game Create a “functional walking skeleton”
          • 3. Mid Game
          • 4. End Game
          • 5. Create a Sprint Backlog for Opening Game

  • B. Staying Relevant to Customers by Understanding What They Really Want

    • Today's customers really want products or services that take care of their needs. So, it is key to understand customer behavior and gear the product or services toward this behavior
    • how can you deliver what customers want? Putting yourself in the customer’s shoes and empathizing
    • INNOVATION is often misunderstood as creating new, breakthrough products. It's really about designing stuff that matters to the people who use them
    • connect emotionally with their customer: Today's customers are no longer passive; they want to engage with the Scrum teams as co-creators, partners, and community members
    • Model: Value Proposition Canvas (sub-part of Business Model Canvas)
      • tools that can be leveraged to explore what customers really want
      • Customer Profile
        • use it to visualize, test, and track the understanding of people or companies you intend to create value for
        • Customer´s Job
          • The jobs that the customers try to get done (functional, social, emotional)
        • Gains
          • How customers measure the success of a job well done
          • Positive outcomes that the customers hope to achieve
        • Pains
          • Pains which annoy customers while trying to get a job done
          • Pains and negative outcomes that the customer hopes to avoid
      • Value Map
        • makes explicit how your product and services relieve pains and create gains
        • use it to design, test, and iterate the value proposition until you figure out what resonates with customers
        • Products and Services
          • list the Products and Services your value proposition builds on
        • Gain Creators
          • in which way these products services and features are Gain Creators
          • how they produce increase or maximize outcomes and benefits that customers expect, desire, or would be surprised by
        • Pain Relievers
          • in which way these products services and features are Pain Relievers
          • how they eliminate, reduce, or minimize pains customers care about

      1. Create the map above

      2. connect Customer Profile Gains/Pains with Value Map Gains/Pains (connecting what matters to customers and how your products, services, and features ease pain and create gains

         NOTE: Great value propositions target essential customers’ jobs, pains, and gains

         NOTE: the value map may contain many items, but highlight only the ones you intend to focus on

  • C. Understanding Customers' Perspectives & Creating a Story That Customers Can Connect With

    • The Difference Model:
      • Understanding how customers use products/services is key to tapping into their satisfaction
      • The Six P´s: Purpose, Principles, People, Personal, Perceptions, and Product
    • PERSONA Template
      • is a great learning opportunity to capture the needs and wants of the users and customers
      • Picture and Name
      • Details:
        • Characteristics (role, activities, behaviors, attitudes), Demographics, Psychographics…
      • Goal:
        • What problems want to solve or which benefits seek?
        • Why would buy your product?

  • NOTE:

    • Organizations need to move from where the customer was ancillary to the job that we do to where "the customer is central to the job that we do."
    • Many companies put a big effort into collecting hard data and delivering features that customers want. However, what is also key is to collect soft data like feedback, stories, and even customer behavior