How to be lean as a product manager

As a product manager, your main focus is recognizing and delivering customer value. I was searching for the industry’s best practices to identify and deliver customer value. That's when I came across an article about lean. The explanation outlined the application of lean in car manufacturing.

Lean* and its principles* inspired me. I wanted to discover practical ways to apply lean thinking as a product manager. Despite extensive searches, I had to generate my summary of lean applications for product management.

This article is about why I created my summary of how lean can be applied in product management and share the summary with you.

Let’s start with the basics and take a look at the meaning of lean and its principles.

What is lean?

Lean* is a way of thinking about creating needed value with fewer resources and less waste. And lean is a practice consisting of continuous experimentation to achieve perfect value with zero waste.

What are lean principles?

The Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI), was founded by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones in 1997. It is considered the go-to resource for lean wisdom, training, and seminars.

According to Womack and Jones, there are five key lean principles*

1. Identify value 🌟
   Goal: Identify and define value. (Value is when the customer is willing to pay for it)
2. Map the value stream 🗾
   Goal: Identify all the activities used to provide customer value. Reduce or eliminate unnecessary steps
3. Create flow 🔄
   Goal: Avoid delays and interruptions in the remaining steps.
4. Establish pull 🪢
   Goal: Limit work in progress. Ensure that you create the right quantity of products when they are needed.
5. Seek perfection 💡
   Goal: Every employee and company should strive towards continuous process improvement

As mentioned at the start, I was very much influenced and convinced that these principles should also be applied in technology and services-based organisations. I came across several articles including

1. The Lean Product Management Manifesto by Melissa Perri *

TLDR;

1. Customer problems and needs over internal requirements.
2. Data-driven experiments over preconceived solutions.
3. Customer problem roadmaps over feature roadmaps.
4. Idea generation and collaboration over solution mandates.

2. Core Principles of Lean Product and Process Development by Katrina Appell, and John Drogosz*

TLDR;

1. Deeply understand what the product must be
2. Create flow and eliminate waste to get speed and precision in bringing that product to the marketplace.
3. Creating new value.
4. It’s all about people.

3. Lean start-up*

TLDR;

Build, measure, learn

The reason I didn’t reuse these was I still had open questions like

• As a product manager, how can I apply lean principles to the customer discovery and delivery phases of the product development process?
• What other lean practices can be used in product management, beyond the “build, measure, and learn” cycle? Does this imply that activities such as defining product strategy, roadmap, prioritization, and others are not encompassed within the realm of lean practices?
• Who is accountable and responsible for lean applications in processes? Is it an individual, a team, or an organisation?

I delved into lean principles application to product management phases to address these questions. I discovered the answers. Which I have shared below.

What is lean product management?

Lean product management means applying lean principles to the product development lifecycle.

The main phases of product development are

1. Identifying customer needs and value i.e discovery
2. Delivering the value to the customer i.e execution

and both of these phases involve processes followed by individuals/teams using the

3. Foundation set by organisational culture

to eliminate waste to ensure delivering the right customer value at the right time.

What is the practical application of lean in product management?

We should implement lean thinking in

A) Product management phases (i.e discovery and execution), focusing on:

1. The methods of conducting customer discovery to identify user values.
2. How individuals and teams collaborate to deliver that value to users efficiently.

and

B) Organisational culture, to support

3. Individuals and teams to practice customer discovery and value delivery in a lean way.

These implementations will ensure

1. Delivery of the right value to customers 🌟
2. Streamlined end-to-end processes to deliver customer values. 🗾
3. Efficient delivery of values 🔄
4. Fulfilment of customer needs with balanced resources 🪢
5. Continuous improvement to promote learning culture 💡

Now let's look at the practices and frameworks (other than build, measure and learn) in product development that also apply lean principles.

Note: Linking these practices with product development phases gave clarity. In product management, it demonstrated how lean can be applied. I have documented only a few of them for guidance purposes.

1) Customer Discovery:

Identifying and validating user value is the stepping stone in lean methodology. It is also crucial in product development aswell.

The discovery process

1. Identifies and validates user value 🌟
2. Ensures teams avoid building something that needs to be depreciated after significant effort has been spent.🗾

and frameworks to conduct discovery ensures

3. We deliver user value efficiently 🔄

4. The team only focuses on items within deliver customer value. They discard product streams proven to lack user value.🪢

5. Measurement of customer satisfaction and product success to improve user experience 💡

Discovery process overview

Marty Cagan identifies four big risks in product management. They should be mitigated in the product discovery phase.

1. Value risk (whether customers will buy it or users will choose to use it)
2. Usability risk (whether users can figure out how to use it)
3. Feasibility risk (whether our engineers can build what we need with the time, skills, and technology we have)
4. Business viability risk (whether this solution also works for the various aspects of our business)

Frameworks to conduct product discovery:

1. Double diamond approach
2. Design thinking
3. IBM loop
4. Lean startup (build measure learn)
5. Opportunity solution tree

2) Execution:

Delivering value 🌟 in a lean way means to

1. Optimise the processes which cause delays and reworks 🗾
2. Deliver value efficiently 🔄
3. Reduce distractions for the team. Ensure the team is working on initiatives that create a big impact for customers and the business. 🪢
4. Continuously improving these processes by learning 💡

Frameworks

1. Impact mapping
2. Agile frameworks
3. Outcome-based roadmaps
4. Team ideation
5. Data-driven prioritisation

3) Alignment of the organization with discovery and delivery

The principles of lean thinking should extend to organizational values to guarantee

• Focus on customer values instead of internal requirements 🌟
• Empower teams and individuals to make decisions. This reduces delays instead of waiting for sign-offs 🔄
• We collaborate from start to finish to deliver customer value. We use various resources, including technology and human resources. We avoid working in silos. 🗾 🪢
• Continuous measurement of customer satisfaction instead of only focusing on customer complaints 💡
• Regularly review product quality metrics and refine processes. Don’t just react to incidents; focus on prevention. 💡

Framework and guidelines:

1. 3 gaps analysis (outcomes, actions and plans)
2. Product led growth
3. Product strategy/OKRs
4. Product quality metrics
5. Business process modeling

🔑Key takeaways:

• Lean thinking applies to individuals and teams who identify and deliver user values
• Organizational culture plays a crucial role. It endorses and supports the processes adopted by individuals and teams for lean delivery of value.

If you have any suggestions or feedback, don’t hesitate to comment or reach out to me via my email at nidasaleem333@gmail.com.

*References:

What is lean : https://www.lean.org/explore-lean/what-is-lean/
5 Lean Principles: https://theleanway.net/The-Five-Principles-of-Lean
The Lean Product Management Manifesto by Melissa Perri : https://medium.com/the-agile-weekly/the-lean-product-management-manifesto-41dd5d1d03ae
4 Core Principles of Lean Product and Process Development by Katrina Appell, and John Drogosz : https://www.lean.org/the-lean-post/articles/4-core-principles-of-lean-product-and-process-development-explained/
Lean start up methodology: https://theleanstartup.com/principles

Other useful links:

Lean Transformation framework: https://www.lean.org/explore-lean/the-lean-transformation-framework/
Lean product and process development: https://www.lean.org/explore-lean/product-process-development/