A practical 9 steps guide to understand the lean mentality

1. Building products the
lean way
Riaydh Geeks

2. Let’s start with a story

3. Hello World!
• How many worked on a project that never got released?
• How many worked on a project that was released but nobody used it?
• What is the first thing you do when you have an idea for a new project?
• How many in here are in charge of managing or creating products?

4. A little about me
• I worked on startups and a corporate
• Worked on about 20 different internal and external products, only 5 of which
are actively in use today.
• I work at a department called Emerging Business at Elm which allows me to
use lean every day.

5. On Lean
• How many know about lean?
• How many applied lean in a project or tried to do that?
• A shout out to Elm, thanks for giving me the opportunity to attend the lean
startup conference in SF. I wouldn’t be standing here today without it.
• Also, everything I say and do is my own opinion only and does not represent
Elm in anyway or form.

6. Who uses lean?
 Almost every serious startup seeking to be funded or admitted at an incubator.
 ProductHunt.com
 Intuit
 Quickbooks, mint.com and many other tax software.
 8000 employees
 GE (General Electric)
 300,000 employee
 Founded by Thomas Edison (130 years of success !!)
 Fast Works
 they do it for new products,
 sales
 internal processes
 The American Government !!
 18F

7. What is lean?
idea
Build
Measure
Learn
Idea
Customer
Problem
Riskiest
Assumption
Success
Criteria
Validation
Decision
Learn
Solution

9. Applying Lean – Step 1:Idea
• What is an idea?
• Kinds of ideas
 Individual ideas
 Corporate ideas
• How can lean help

10. Applying Lean – Step 2:Customer
• Identify the customer who’s goanna use your product not the customer who
will make you money
• Understand these customers:
 What their life is like?
 Where do they hangout?
 What topics are they interested in?
• Your goal is to know enough information to sympathize with them and
understand how they think.

11. Applying Lean – Step 3:Problem
• Define the problem very well. What is the problem that you think your
customers have.
• DO NOT try to find the solution yet. Focus on the problem.
• Brain storm problems and identify the biggest one.
• Your objective is to find the cookie monster look not to find the solution.

13. Applying Lean – Step 4:Riskest
assumption
• Brainstorm assumptions.
• What is the assumption that if it was true, it’ll drive you out of business.
• Different types of assumption:
 Problem assumption
 Solution assumption
 Implementation assumption

16. Applying Lean – Step 5: Success
Criteria
• Design the experiment.
• What is the percentage that needs to hold to say that your experiment was a
success.
• It doesn’t have to be accurate, it gives you a target.
• Trust your feelings here, you may iterate even if you have a 100% success.

18. Applying Lean – Step 6: Validation
• Get out of the building
• Customers can not know that you’re running an experiment
• NO yes or no questions
• NO leading questions
• Stages
 Problem validation
 Solution validation
 Implementation validation

19. Applying Lean – Step 7: Decision
• When to persevere
• When to iterate
• When to pivot

20. Applying Lean – Step 8: Learn
• Record your learning from this iteration
• Sometimes a pattern will emerge as you iterate, keep an eye out for those.

22. Applying Lean – Step 9: Solution
• You only discuss the solution after you’ve identified the problem
• Don’t be shy to ask for money
• Ways to validate solutions:
 Landing pages :-/
 Audience bulding
 Blog, newsletter, twitter…etc.
 CONNECT
 Concierge
 Do the features you wanna build manually before you automate it.
 You’re human.
 HELP
 Wizard of Oz
 Make user think that you’re a robot
 PRETEND
 Fake doors
 See how many people want to walk through the door before you make it
 MEASURE
 Crowdfunding
 Get money.
 SELL

24. Thank you, Help me improve :D
• Pickup your phone
• Open your email app
• Create a new email
• Send it to Motaz.AG@gmail.com
• Put the title as
(how much you liked this presentation out of 5) (would you like me to send you emails
about “Lean in entreprises” and “customer development”)
i.e. “5 Yes” or “1 No”
• Send the email “empty messages are ok”
• Do. It. Now. please

25. Lean Startup Machine is coming to
Riyadh
• https://www.leanstartupmachine.com/cities/riyadh
• Thanks to the people who made this happen
 ‫نورة‬‫اللحيدان‬
@norahallohaidan
 ‫الفريح‬ ‫شهد‬
@Shahd_F
 For any questions regarding LSM you can mention Raat account
@Ra_at1

26. Let’s stay in touch
• Twitter: @MotazG
• E-Mail: motaz.ag@gmail.com