• Product Owner

Lean Innovation: the magic mix for Product Owners

Product Owners beware. Lean Innovation is a magic mix perfect for, yes… Product Owners. Lean Innovation is all about combining the best of three worlds: Scrum, Design Thinking and Lean Startup. So what exactly are you supposed to do with that? And what role do you play in that as a Product Owner?

We take a journey through the three worlds you need for Lean Innovation:

Scrum

Scrum is a method that develops, accelerates, flexibilizes and controls. Previously, Scrum was primarily used to develop software. An old-fashioned view? Yes. Because today Scrum is also used in other processes, think of creative processes in Marketing Communications departments. But what Scrum does not do is provide a clear answer to the question: what should we make? It provides only minor support in determining whether we are actually making the right thing. So you can create products/services that do not formulate an answer to the problems in the market. Et voila, a lot of time lost without happy customers. Even though we all thought it was a good idea to make something that is in demand.

Design Thinking

Therefore, we also include Design Thinking there. Design Thinking has now become a widely used and versatile term. It may even be a little unclear what it means now. Yet for now, it is the best name for the process we still need. Indeed, an important step in this process is the “Ideate” phase. This is crucial for developing distinctive solutions. A Design Thinking process works as follows:

Design Thinking is a design process from start to finish. Much of the Agile world is beginning to see that for successful innovation, design is an indispensable ingredient.

But then again, what Design Thinking moderately addresses is the answer to the question, “How do you make sure you keep learning during the innovation process?”

Lean StartUp

And that is exactly where Lean Startup does have the answer. Lean Startup puts validated learning at its core. Simply put, you learn as you build-measure-test whether your assumptions are correct. In English they use the terminology “Build-Measure-Learn. Startups often fail because their proposition is not a seamless fit with the market. And that’s why Lean Startup is an indispensable addition to Scrum and Design Thinking. After all, it ensures that you and your team are not doing unnecessary work or slowing down the project considerably.

Lean Innovation

What next? Well, you have to combine the best of all three worlds. With the strong ingredients from Scrum, Design Thinking and Lean Startup, you get to the core: Lean Innovation. How does combining ingredients work:

• Speed of Scrum;
• Creativity of Design Thinking;
• Validation of Lean Startup.

And that’s how you get to the core: Lean Innovation. The way to do your projects smoother, smarter, more cost-effectively and with more fun, and make your customers and stakeholders happy. It’s a framework that helps to make the right product. It’s that simple. And that’s how you – as a Product Owner anno today – actually create value.