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Guiding two product teams toward a successful application of Continuous Discovery
Yuki felt somewhat out of touch with their users. Product teams and business teams didn't really understand each other. The development life cycle took too long. As Yuki couldn’t put a finger on what was amiss in their process, they teamed up with Hike One. We helped Yuki realise how they can constantly increase business value and put the user at the centre of the decision-making process. Every day.
Yuki’s mission is to make bookkeeping smarter, simpler and more fun through a highly automated online accounting platform. Yuki sees customers as partners, and is highly dedicated to their success.
In a taster workshop, we introduced Yuki to Continuous Discovery. It was an instant hit. Fast forward to today: through our coaching, two product teams have successfully implemented product discovery habits, a third team recently started their transition independently, and the rest of Yuki is gearing up to follow suit.
Our approach was for a product discovery coach to consecutively join two different product teams, where we became part of each team for a few months. Together with their coach, the teams started cultivating that product mindset. How might we increase user value in a way that also increases business value? How might our product make the biggest impact on both? And how might we, as a product team, stay focused on our path to success at all times?
"Our discovery coach was always focused on getting results – and fast. Always pushing us to get started today, make things smaller, learn from our users now and not next week."
Step one was a workshop with the teams' stakeholders to define our desired business outcome and a few possible product outcomes together. The teams then started interviewing users to get a deep understanding of their needs, and to identify opportunities that could deliver on our desired outcome. We structured and restructured our opportunity solution trees until we were confident about our understanding of the problem space. We prioritised a promising opportunity and were ready to brainstorm solutions.
Since nobody wants to work on a huge feature with a vague business value that no customer will ever use, we like to experiment. With one of the teams, we decided to do a Design Sprint to quickly find out if our solutions’ most risky assumptions were correct. The team zoomed in on the prioritised opportunity. We combined evidence and knowledge we had gathered into a rich array of ideas. We leveraged all this in the process of validating our three main assumptions. And, in only 4 days, we ended up with a small but hugely valuable validated solution for on our backlog.
Meanwhile, both teams always kept their stakeholders in the loop. We showed them our opportunity solution tree (in story mode!), our learnings, decision-making process, and prototypes. We invited them to collaborate with us in interviewing, coming up with solutions, and executing experiments. We managed to shorten feedback loops, both with users and business stakeholders, and we created a shared understanding of desired outcomes and how to get there together.
Yuki's product teams are well on their way toward living and breathing that product mindset. The common ground the teams managed to create with business stakeholders has helped the organisation to become truly user-centric. Yuki can look forward to a continued 30% year-on-year growth, without having to worry about losing touch with their end user – or with each other.
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