Product Discovery Workshop – Agile India 2012 Accepted Proposal
Many product companies struggle with a big challenge: how to identify a Minimal Viable Product that will let them quickly validate their product hypothesis?
Teams that share the product vision and agree on priorities for features are able to move faster and more effectively.
During this workshop, we’ll take a hypothetical product and coach you on how to effectively come up with an evolutionary roadmap for your product.
This day long workshop teaches you how to collaborate on the vision of the product and create a Product Backlog, a User Story map and a pragmatic Release Plan.
Detailed Activity Breakup
- PART 1: UNDERSTAND PRODUCT CONTEXT
- Introduction
- Define Product Vision
- Identify Users That Matter
- Create User Personas
- Define User Goals
- A Day-In-Life Of Each Persona
- PART 2: BUILD INITIAL STORY MAP FROM ACTIVITY MODEL
- Prioritize Personas
- Break Down Activities And Tasks From User Goals
- Lay Out Goals Activities And Tasks
- Walk Through And Refine Activity Model
- PART 3: CREATE FIRST-CUT PRODUCT ROAD MAP
- Prioritize High Level Tasks
- Define Themes
- Refine Tasks
- Define Minimum Viable Product
- Identify Internal And External Release Milestones
- PART 4: WRITE USER STORIES FOR THE FIRST RELEASE
- Define User Task Level Acceptance Criteria
- Break Down User Tasks To User Stories Based On Acceptance Criteria
- Refine Acceptance Criteria For Each Story
- Find Ways To Further Thin-Slice User Stories
- Capture Assumptions And Non-Functional Requirements
- PART 5: REFINE FIRST INTERNAL RELEASE BASED ON ESTIMATES
- Define Relative Size Of User Stories
- Refine Internal Release Milestones For First-Release Based On Estimates
- Define Goals For Each Release
- Refine Product And Project Risks
- Present And Commit To The Plan
- PART 6: RETROSPECTIVE
- Each part will take roughly 30 mins.
I’ve facilitated this workshop for many organizations (small-startups to large enterprises.)
More details: Product Discovery Workshop from Industrial Logic
Techniques
Focused Break-Out Sessions, Group Activities, Interactive Dialogues, Presentations, Heated Debates/Discussions and Some Fun Games
Target Audience
- Product Owner
- Release/Project Manager
- Subject Matter Expert, Domain Expert, or Business Analyst
- User Experience team
- Architect/Tech Lead
- Core Development Team (including developers, testers, DBAs, etc.)
This tutorial can take max 30 people. (3 teams of 10 people each.)
Workshop Prerequisites
Required: working knowledge of Agile (iterative and incremental software delivery models) Required: working knowledge of personas, users stories, backlogs, acceptance criteria, etc.
Testimonials
“I come away from this workshop having learned a great deal about the process and equally about many strategies and nuances of facilitating it. Invaluable!
Naresh Jain clearly has extensive experience with the Product Discovery Workshop. He conveyed the principles and practices underlying the process very well, with examples from past experience and application to the actual project addressed in the workshop. His ability to quickly relate to the project and team members, and to focus on the specific details for the decomposition of this project at the various levels (goals/roles, activities, tasks), is remarkable and a good example for those learning to facilitate the workshop.
Key take-aways for me include the technique of acceptance criteria driven decomposition, and the point that it is useful to map existing software to provide a baseline framework for future additions.”
Doug Brophy, Agile Expert, GE Energy
Learning outcomes
- Understand the thought process and steps involved during a typical product discovery and release planning session
- Using various User-Centered Design techniques, learn how to create a User Story Map to help you visualize your product
- Understand various prioritization techniques that work at the Business-Goal and User-Persona Level
- Learn how to decompose User Activities into User Tasks and then into User Stories
- Apply an Acceptance Criteria-Driven Discovery approach to flush out thin slices of functionality that cut across the system
- Identify various techniques to narrow the scope of your releases, without reducing the value delivered to the users
- Improve confidence and collaboration between the business and engineering teams
- Practice key techniques to work in short cycles to get rapid feedback and reduce risk
