How the principles of the game "Playing Lean" help in the creation of products
Hi, Habr!
They talk a lot about gamification and often, but it’s not always possible for companies to put the knowledge gained in games into practice. In Retail Rocket, we believe that learning through the game helps us to understand better the features of various processes and take this experience into account when working on projects.
Today we want to tell how the “Playing Lean” game helps not only to immerse into the methodology of lean manufacturing, but also to put this experience into practice - in the development of products and new features.
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The game “Playing Lean” was invented by Simen Für Jorgensen and Tore Rasmussen - experts in the field of creating lean startups from Norway. They laid out their project on Kickstarter in June 2015 and after 10 hours they collected the necessary amount to finance the game.
The essence of "Playing Lean" is to create a new product that is needed by the market before competitors do. The game can participate from 2 to 12 people. Depending on the number of participants, 2-4 teams are formed that are fighting for market control. Each team conducts research, develops and changes the characteristics of its product and sells it to end users, and thus learns to build a company.
The game allows you to understand the method of lean manufacturing, see how it affects business development, and look at traditional tasks from a different angle. It is useful for entrepreneurs, product managers and anyone who is somehow involved in product development. The game helps to understand the value of experiments and the value of understanding your market.
Due to the fact that learning goes through the action in the game, the knowledge and skills acquired in Playing Lean are remembered for a long time.
Thanks to the game you will understand that:
And now we will describe in more detail how we apply the stages of the game in Retail Rocket in practice.
In the game "Playing Lean":
Team members need to open customer cards, thus identifying the needs of the target audience. On each card, a combination of different geometric shapes designates features that users need. Different users have different needs, so when opening cards, it is important to choose which way to go.
Customer cards vary in color, each of which means the “level” of users.
Conducting experiments, you can discover new levels of customers and find out their needs in order to change your product under Central Asia. The goal - the fastest to sell a single customer on a red card.
On practice:
Work on a product always begins with market research. It can be conducted in the form of a study, for example, interviewing potential users, based on Design Thinking principles or using Shadowing techniques and many other ways. To get more insights, you can use several different techniques when developing a product.
After the study, Retail Rocket product managers make up the “buyer's person” - a portrait of a potential user. At this stage, you need to describe in as much detail as possible all the features that may affect the implementation of the product. The person allows the whole team to understand for whom they are developing a product.
Then we proceed to compiling the User Story Map - this is a step-by-step path that reflects how the client solves the problem using the product. To understand what components should be in MVP, we highlight the main steps to achieve the task. For each step we paint, the necessary functionality for the task - this is the User story. MVP is made up of the most important user stories, and all other user stories can be put on the product development map, and they will be developed in future releases.
In the game "Playing Lean":
As soon as we know what the customer needs, we begin development - we build product features. Developing new features over time requires more and more costs. Since the cards with the needs of customers at different levels may differ significantly in the composition of the features, teams occasionally need to cut out too much in order to free up resources for product development for the needs of the final target group (red card). In some cases, it is necessary to almost completely change the composition of the features of the product.
On practice:
After we have determined the directions of development, we draw up a detailed specification, in which we describe the User Story to the maximum detail. The developers discuss the task, estimate the effort and begin the work.
Once the MVP is ready, we evaluate it from different angles: how much does a new feature affect the life and profit of a client? If we understand that the result is positive, we begin to develop the product further.
As in the case of the game, the support of a large number of features requires significant resources, so the possibilities that are not used, over time, we cut out, in order to direct efforts to more features that customers need.
We divide all tasks that come to the development department into 4 parts according to how visible they are and what value they bring:
Thus, the backlog of tasks is gradually formed. We wrote about how we prioritize tasks in the post Working with task backlog from the point of view of the project manager in Retail Rocket .
In the game "Playing Lean":
The same customer card can be opened by several teams, and, accordingly, several teams will want to sell this client. Especially if for making a sale you need to develop some features. Therefore, the development speed and capabilities of the sales department (number of sellers) become critical.
An important rule of the game is that every level of users needs to be sold sequentially, and the next level card should be located next to the previous one. Thus, the importance of the chosen “path” is proved once again.
On practice:
In life, projects also compete for customers with competitors - several projects, as a rule, claim the same company.
By analogy with “Playing Lean”, the choice of the audience to which the project is directed should be thought out when launching a product or feature. As you progress, you can deviate a little and try to conquer the adjacent Central Asia, but constantly drastically shifting the focus of the project is not the best idea. That is, it is important to maintain flexibility, but at the same time follow the given course.
After selling to the first level of the audience, the next research begins, and the cycle repeats.
In addition to the general principles of Lean and understanding how they help start-ups to develop, there are several important lessons to be learned from the “Playing Lean” game:
In Game
In the game, each team has an unfair advantage (unfair advantage), i.e. something that gives odds to other players. One team first enters the market, i.e. has the right of the first move, experienced developers are at the origins of the other, which gives an advantage in technical excellence, the third is fast followers and may be the first to look at a card with customer needs, and the team, which is considered to be an internal launch, starts the game with one already built feature.
On practice
In life, various projects and companies also have competitive advantages. This could be the founding team of developers who themselves are well versed in the intricacies of technology, or strong marketers who create demand for start-up products, technological leadership or wide connections among the target audience — any aspect that helps to be ahead of the competition.
In Game
Each team has a limited number of employees, which increases with time. Therefore, it is important to properly allocate resources between research, development and sales.
On practice
If the game limits on the number of employees are artificial, then in real life a startup has a certain budget to which the company must fit, therefore the allocation of resources is one of the most important tasks.
In Game
In addition to conducting research, developing and selling products, you can develop your company during the game. Investments in marketing, innovation culture and technical excellence help solve problems faster and save resources. For example, the more marketing is pumped up, the fewer employees are required for sales, and improvements in innovation help to make experiments faster and find out the needs of the target audience.
On practice
As in the game, in real life, investments in the development of the company in different directions help to quickly capture the market and make more sales. Marketing allows you to build a brand and shape the demand for a product or feature, investing in research and analytics helps you quickly understand what your target audience needs, and technological leadership ensures faster and better product development.
A startup, as a rule, operates in conditions of uncertainty, and the Lean philosophy helps to take this into account when starting. For the development of the project it is necessary to remain flexible, constantly look for growth points and get rid of all unnecessary.
Playing Lean allows our team members not only to immerse themselves in the methodology of lean manufacturing, but also to understand the peculiarities of the work of different departments (developers, product managers, etc.). Thanks to the introduction of learning through games, we are able to quickly and more easily explain to new employees the principles of Lean.
“Playing Lean” is not the only game that we use in training, please note in the comments if you are interested in the topic and we will tell you about other games and gamification techniques that we use.
They talk a lot about gamification and often, but it’s not always possible for companies to put the knowledge gained in games into practice. In Retail Rocket, we believe that learning through the game helps us to understand better the features of various processes and take this experience into account when working on projects.
Today we want to tell how the “Playing Lean” game helps not only to immerse into the methodology of lean manufacturing, but also to put this experience into practice - in the development of products and new features.
')
What is "Playing Lean"
The game “Playing Lean” was invented by Simen Für Jorgensen and Tore Rasmussen - experts in the field of creating lean startups from Norway. They laid out their project on Kickstarter in June 2015 and after 10 hours they collected the necessary amount to finance the game.
The essence of "Playing Lean" is to create a new product that is needed by the market before competitors do. The game can participate from 2 to 12 people. Depending on the number of participants, 2-4 teams are formed that are fighting for market control. Each team conducts research, develops and changes the characteristics of its product and sells it to end users, and thus learns to build a company.
The game allows you to understand the method of lean manufacturing, see how it affects business development, and look at traditional tasks from a different angle. It is useful for entrepreneurs, product managers and anyone who is somehow involved in product development. The game helps to understand the value of experiments and the value of understanding your market.
Due to the fact that learning goes through the action in the game, the knowledge and skills acquired in Playing Lean are remembered for a long time.
What is useful "Playing Lean"
Thanks to the game you will understand that:
- The best team is not necessarily the largest, more trained and resourced better than others.
- The best team is not necessarily the one that makes the best product.
- Luck as well as strategy determines the outcome of the game.
- Learn to allocate resources more effectively between researching audience needs and building features. Teams that did not, missed the successes in the early stages.
- Understand that some segments of the market do not need features that were developed earlier. It takes a lot of effort to maintain them, so it’s much more efficient to remove unused features and focus on real needs.
And now we will describe in more detail how we apply the stages of the game in Retail Rocket in practice.
Stage 1. Market research and creation of the customer’s person
In the game "Playing Lean":
Team members need to open customer cards, thus identifying the needs of the target audience. On each card, a combination of different geometric shapes designates features that users need. Different users have different needs, so when opening cards, it is important to choose which way to go.
Customer cards vary in color, each of which means the “level” of users.
Conducting experiments, you can discover new levels of customers and find out their needs in order to change your product under Central Asia. The goal - the fastest to sell a single customer on a red card.
On practice:
Work on a product always begins with market research. It can be conducted in the form of a study, for example, interviewing potential users, based on Design Thinking principles or using Shadowing techniques and many other ways. To get more insights, you can use several different techniques when developing a product.
After the study, Retail Rocket product managers make up the “buyer's person” - a portrait of a potential user. At this stage, you need to describe in as much detail as possible all the features that may affect the implementation of the product. The person allows the whole team to understand for whom they are developing a product.
Then we proceed to compiling the User Story Map - this is a step-by-step path that reflects how the client solves the problem using the product. To understand what components should be in MVP, we highlight the main steps to achieve the task. For each step we paint, the necessary functionality for the task - this is the User story. MVP is made up of the most important user stories, and all other user stories can be put on the product development map, and they will be developed in future releases.
Stage 2. Client's task solution - development process
In the game "Playing Lean":
As soon as we know what the customer needs, we begin development - we build product features. Developing new features over time requires more and more costs. Since the cards with the needs of customers at different levels may differ significantly in the composition of the features, teams occasionally need to cut out too much in order to free up resources for product development for the needs of the final target group (red card). In some cases, it is necessary to almost completely change the composition of the features of the product.
On practice:
After we have determined the directions of development, we draw up a detailed specification, in which we describe the User Story to the maximum detail. The developers discuss the task, estimate the effort and begin the work.
Once the MVP is ready, we evaluate it from different angles: how much does a new feature affect the life and profit of a client? If we understand that the result is positive, we begin to develop the product further.
As in the case of the game, the support of a large number of features requires significant resources, so the possibilities that are not used, over time, we cut out, in order to direct efforts to more features that customers need.
We divide all tasks that come to the development department into 4 parts according to how visible they are and what value they bring:
Thus, the backlog of tasks is gradually formed. We wrote about how we prioritize tasks in the post Working with task backlog from the point of view of the project manager in Retail Rocket .
Stage 3. Product sale
In the game "Playing Lean":
The same customer card can be opened by several teams, and, accordingly, several teams will want to sell this client. Especially if for making a sale you need to develop some features. Therefore, the development speed and capabilities of the sales department (number of sellers) become critical.
An important rule of the game is that every level of users needs to be sold sequentially, and the next level card should be located next to the previous one. Thus, the importance of the chosen “path” is proved once again.
On practice:
In life, projects also compete for customers with competitors - several projects, as a rule, claim the same company.
By analogy with “Playing Lean”, the choice of the audience to which the project is directed should be thought out when launching a product or feature. As you progress, you can deviate a little and try to conquer the adjacent Central Asia, but constantly drastically shifting the focus of the project is not the best idea. That is, it is important to maintain flexibility, but at the same time follow the given course.
After selling to the first level of the audience, the next research begins, and the cycle repeats.
Useful lessons
In addition to the general principles of Lean and understanding how they help start-ups to develop, there are several important lessons to be learned from the “Playing Lean” game:
Lesson 1. The role of market advantage.
In Game
In the game, each team has an unfair advantage (unfair advantage), i.e. something that gives odds to other players. One team first enters the market, i.e. has the right of the first move, experienced developers are at the origins of the other, which gives an advantage in technical excellence, the third is fast followers and may be the first to look at a card with customer needs, and the team, which is considered to be an internal launch, starts the game with one already built feature.
On practice
In life, various projects and companies also have competitive advantages. This could be the founding team of developers who themselves are well versed in the intricacies of technology, or strong marketers who create demand for start-up products, technological leadership or wide connections among the target audience — any aspect that helps to be ahead of the competition.
Lesson 2. The importance of resource allocation
In Game
Each team has a limited number of employees, which increases with time. Therefore, it is important to properly allocate resources between research, development and sales.
On practice
If the game limits on the number of employees are artificial, then in real life a startup has a certain budget to which the company must fit, therefore the allocation of resources is one of the most important tasks.
Lesson 3. The value of investment in the development of the company
In Game
In addition to conducting research, developing and selling products, you can develop your company during the game. Investments in marketing, innovation culture and technical excellence help solve problems faster and save resources. For example, the more marketing is pumped up, the fewer employees are required for sales, and improvements in innovation help to make experiments faster and find out the needs of the target audience.
On practice
As in the game, in real life, investments in the development of the company in different directions help to quickly capture the market and make more sales. Marketing allows you to build a brand and shape the demand for a product or feature, investing in research and analytics helps you quickly understand what your target audience needs, and technological leadership ensures faster and better product development.
Conclusion
A startup, as a rule, operates in conditions of uncertainty, and the Lean philosophy helps to take this into account when starting. For the development of the project it is necessary to remain flexible, constantly look for growth points and get rid of all unnecessary.
Playing Lean allows our team members not only to immerse themselves in the methodology of lean manufacturing, but also to understand the peculiarities of the work of different departments (developers, product managers, etc.). Thanks to the introduction of learning through games, we are able to quickly and more easily explain to new employees the principles of Lean.
“Playing Lean” is not the only game that we use in training, please note in the comments if you are interested in the topic and we will tell you about other games and gamification techniques that we use.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/347650/
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