Lean Customer Development by Alvarez, Cindy -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy Praise for Lean Customer Development Foreword Preface

Who Is This Book For? Who Can Practice Customer Development? How Does This Book Fit into O’Reilly’s Lean Series? Why I Wrote This Book What You’ll Learn A Word of Thanks

1. Why You Need Customer Development

The First Challenge Is Inside the Building What Is Customer Development? What Is Lean Customer Development? What Customer Development Is Not

Customer Development Is Not Just for Startups Customer Development Is Not Product Development Customer Development Does Not Replace Product Management Customer Development Is Not User Research

Why You Need Customer Development

How Do We Improve Our Odds?

Answering Common Objections Let’s Make This Work Next Step: Get Started

2. Where Should I Start?

Exercise 1: Identify Your Assumptions

Ready? Set? Go!

Exercise 2: Write Your Problem Hypothesis Exercise 3: Map Your Target Customer Profile Next Step: Find Your Target Customers

3. Who Should I Be Talking To?

How Can I Find Customers Before I’ve Even Built a Product?

Come On—Why Would They Talk to Me?

The Importance of Earlyvangelists Three Things That Motivate People

Helping Others Makes Us Happy We Like to Sound Smart Fixing Things Gives Us a Sense of Purpose

Come with me on a trip to the DMV

How Can I Find My Customers?

Ask Your Connections for Introductions

Would you introduce me to your friends who ...?

Casting a Wider Net

Finding people on LinkedIn Finding people on Quora Finding people on forums and private online communities Finding people in the offline world Using blog posts Using Twitter Not using Craigslist Using a landing page

How Should I Conduct My Interviews?

Visiting the Customer’s Home or Office In-Person Conversations in a Neutral Location Phone Conversations Video Chat or Call with Screen Sharing Instant Messaging

Following Up

Scheduling Phone Interviews Scheduling Face-to-Face Interviews Spacing Your Interviews

Interview Troubleshooting

What If No One Responds? Interview No-Shows

Next Step: Get Ready for Customer Development Interviews

4. What Should I Be Learning?

Get Started with These Customer Development Questions Customers Don’t Know What They Want! What You Should Be Listening For

What’s the Customer Already Doing?

Abstract up one level Focus on procedure, not outcomes Focus on the present, not the future

What Constraints Are Holding Customers Back?

Problem is not perceived as a problem Lack of awareness of what’s technologically possible Limited resources Cultural or social expectations that limit behaviors

What Frustrates (or Motivates) Your Customer? How Your Customers Make Decisions, Spend Money, and Determine Value

Next Step: Get Ready to Do Your Customer Development Interviews

5. Get Out of the Building

The Practice Interview To Record or Not to Record? Taking Great Notes

Invite a Note-taker

Immediately Before the Interview The First Minute The Next Minute Keeping the Conversation Flowing

Avoiding Leading Questions Digging a Little Deeper

Tangents Happen Avoiding the Wish List

Away from Features—Back to the Problem The Magic Wand Question

Avoiding Product Specifics Going Long The Last Few Minutes After the Interview Get Out (Now!)

6. What Does a Validated Hypothesis Look Like?

Maintaining a Healthy Skepticism

Are They Telling You What You Want to Hear? Is the Customer Saying Something Real or Aspirational?

Keeping Organized Notes

Keeping Your Notes in One File Creating a Summary

Rallying the Team Around New Information How Many Interviews Do You Need?

After Two Interviews: Are You Learning What You Need to Learn?

Components of a validated hypothesis What each interview should tell you

Within Five Interviews: The First Really Excited Person Within 10 Interviews: Patterns Emerge

Challenging the patterns No patterns yet?

How Many Interviews Are Enough?

Experience with customer development and industry Complexity of business model and number of dependencies Investment required to create your MVP

After Enough Interviews You Stop Hearing Things That Surprise You

What Does a Validated Hypothesis Look Like? Now What?

7. What Kind of Minimum Viable Product Should I Build?

What Should My MVP Do for Me? MVP Types Pre-Order MVP

Case Study: Finale Fireworks Use Cases

Audience Building MVP

Use Cases

Concierge MVP

Case Study: StyleSeat

The initial hypothesis Starting on the MVP Expanding the hypothesis Ongoing customer development

Use Cases

Wizard of Oz MVP

Case Study: Porch.com

Hypothesis invalidated Minimum exceptional product

Use Cases

Single Use Case MVP

Case Study: Hotwire

Map-based search results on a shadow site Iterating on the MVP Revising the MVP to solve pain points The new site gains traction

Use Cases

Other People’s Product MVP

Case Study: Bing Offers

Roadblocks lead to pivot An opportunity to make deals easy for customers Keep learning from customers

Use Cases

We’ve Built an MVP, Now What?

8. How Does Customer Development Work When You Already Have Customers?

Adapting the MVP Concept

Nothing Broken Attractive but Fake

Use a sketch Use a different domain

More Viable than Minimum

It’s different for startups You know someone cares A little beyond minimum: user complaints, but not frustration Watch out for those who can’t stop at minimum

Finding the Right Customers

How I Learned to Find the Right Customers by Finding the Wrong Ones Find the People Who Can’t Live Without Your Product

Customers Say the Magic Words

How Customers Lower Your Market Risk

Once You’ve Found Your Customers, Explain, Explain, Explain

You’re Asking Questions—Not Building Something Say It Again: This Is Exploratory

The Storytelling Demo Incognito Customer Development

Taking on a New Identity Talking to People Who Aren’t Customers

Show Me How You’re Using Our Product Here’s How to Use Our Product It Can Work For You, Too

9. Ongoing Customer Development

Who’s Already Out of the Building? Who Can It Be, Knocking at Your Door?

Feature Requests Functionality or Design Issues Bugs and Errors Question of the Week Recognizing Bias

Closing the Loop

Collecting Information Sharing the Impact of Customer Development

Now You’re Ready

A. Questions That Work

Questions for Any Customer Development Interview

Tell me about the last time you ___ If you could wave a magic wand and change anything about how you [perform this task], what would it be? What tools do you use for _____? When you started using [tool], what benefit were you expecting?

The whole problem may not be solved

How often do you do _______? Let’s say, how many times in the past month? When this occurs, how much additional time or money does it cost you or your company?

Helping them quantify

Who else experiences this problem? When you do (or use) ______, is there anything you do immediately before to prepare?

Online bill pay is surprisingly manual

Would you be willing to help us by participating in user research or beta testing?

How asking this question helps with future product development

Questions for an Existing Product

When you use [our product], what’s the first thing you do with it? What’s the most useful thing that you regularly do with our product? If you had [requested feature] today, how would that make your life better? Other customers have told me that they experience [problem]...

If It Works, Keep Asking It

Index About the Author Copyright

← Prev
Back
Next →

← Prev
Back
Next →