The document discusses how product teams can transition from a focus on features to addressing real problems as they mature. It recommends establishing a clear product vision and objectives rather than timeline-based roadmaps. Additionally, it suggests separating strategy and execution work, making space for experimentation and validation, and incorporating disruption to prevent stagnation. The overall message is that as products and companies mature, they must adapt processes to grow leanly and continuously solve customer needs.

1. Growing
Up Lean
Janna Bastow
@simplybastow
janna@prodpad.com

2. Product Life Cycle
Introduction DeclineMaturityGrowth
Salesvolume
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

3. Product Life Cycle
Introduction DeclineMaturityGrowth
MVP
happens
here
Salesvolume
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

4. Product Life Cycle
You are here
Introduction DeclineMaturityGrowth
Salesvolume
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

5. Product Life Cycle Where
money is
made
Introduction DeclineMaturityGrowth
Salesvolume
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

6. Product Life Cycle Where
churn
hurts
Introduction DeclineMaturityGrowth
Salesvolume
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

7. What you read about on Medium
Introduction
Growth
Maturity
Decline
Articles published per second
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

8. Difficulty level
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow // janna@prodpad.com
Introduction
Growth
Maturity
Decline
Facepalms per second

9. Hi there!
I’m Janna Bastow
Ask me anything:
@simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

10. Your users are
growing up

11. User cohorts
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow // janna@prodpad.com
Innovators
Early Adopters
Majority
Laggards
Time

12. Growth

13. Maturity

14. Maturity
comes with
problems

15. Problem:
You’re a
feature factory

16. Think Objectives,
not features!
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

17. Ditch your timeline roadmap
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

18. Designed to fail (and not in the good way)
JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC

19. Time
Thingstodo Designed to fail (and not in the good way)

20. Time
Feature A
Thingstodo Designed to fail (and not in the good way)

21. Feature A
Thingstodo Designed to fail (and not in the good way)
Time
Feature B

22. Feature A
Thingstodo Designed to fail (and not in the good way)
Feature B
Time
Feature C

23. Feature A
Thingstodo Designed to fail (and not in the good way)
Feature B
Time
Feature C

24. Thingstodo Designed to fail (and not in the good way)
Time Due dates & duration
ALL
THE
THINGS!

25. Thingstodo Full of assumptions
Time
ALL
THE
ASSUMPTIONS!

26. You assume you know how
much work and how long each
feature is going to take.
Assumption #1
Time
Feature A
Feature B
Feature C
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

27. You assume that nothing else is going
to disrupt your timeline.
Assumption #2
Time
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

28. You assume that each
feature will work
as soon as it is
launched.
Assumption #3
✔
✔
✔
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

29. You assume that each of
these features actually
deserves to exist!
Assumption #4
✔
✔
✔
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

30. The grand assumption:
Nothing’s going to change.
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

31. Made up release dates
Development death marches
Mismanaged expectations
Missed market opportunities
Building the wrong thing
Sad product managers
What could possibly go wrong?

32. is there a better way?

33. 3 steps
to ditching your timeline roadmap
and getting out
of the feature factory

34. Step 1: Product vision
FOR (target customer)
WHO (statement of need or opportunity)
THE (product name) IS A (product category)
THAT (key benefit, reason to buy)
UNLIKE (primary competitive alternative)
OUR PRODUCT (statement of primary differentiation)
Find this free template at: www.prodpad.com/vision-template

35. Step 2: Objectives
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

36. OUTCOME
output
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

37. Step 3: Time horizons
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

38. Your roadmap is a
prototype for your
strategy
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

39. Result: Lean Roadmapping
Top priority for next
work opening
Likely 6+ months away,
but aligns with vision
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Immediate problem to
be solved, currently in
development
Immediate problem to
be solved, currently
being prototyped
Current Near Term Future

40. Objective
Objective
Immediate problem to
be solved, currently in
development
Immediate problem to
be solved, currently
being prototyped
Objective
Objective
Result: Lean Roadmapping
Current Near Term Future

41. Delivery dates
Solving problems
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

42. Problem:
Your backlog
is a beast

43. RIP
Your team’s
ideas

44. Split
strategy
from
execution

45. Product Backlog
Ideas, suggestions, insights
- Ideas and suggestions
- ‘Fuzzy’, incomplete specs
- Not approved
- Not prioritized
- Can be large
- Open to whole team
Development Backlog
Tickets, bugs, dev-ops tasks
- Small, self-contained specs
- Estimated in size
- Approved for development
- Prioritized
- Should be short
- Mostly just for developers
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

46. Split
Discovery and Delivery
roles

47. Problem:
Experimentation
scares you

48. Measure
Learn
Build
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

49. (Discovery part
happens over here)
(Agile is really
just a fancy way of
building, or delivery)
Measure
Learn
Build
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

50. Build
Build
Build
The Build Trap
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

51. Build in
space
for
validation

52. Dual track Agile
Time
Discovery
Delivery
Create space and permission for both Discovery and Delivery
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

53. Don’t trash your
roadmap!
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

54. Likely 6+ months away,
but checking that it
aligns with vision
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Current development
work in progress
- experiment 1
- experiment 2
- experiment 3
Current prototyping
work in progress
- experiment 1
- experiment 2
- experiment 3
- experiment 4
Top confidence for next
work opening
Experimenting on a Lean Roadmap
Current Near Term Future

55. Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Completed
(validation roadmap)
Result:
Testing results now
Result:
Increase by $200!
Result:
No change in #...
Result:
Decrease by 10%!
Top priority for next
work opening
Likely 6+ months away,
but aligns with vision
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Objective
Current Near Term Future
Immediate problem to
be solved, currently in
development
Immediate problem to
be solved, currently
being prototyped
Validating on a Lean Roadmap

56. You know
nothing
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

57. Psychological
safety

58. How might we?
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

59. I bet…
How might we?
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

60. Problem:
You’re about to
be disrupted

61. Risk Aversion Continuum
Nimble and lean Slow and risk-averse
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

62. The Google
20% time
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

63. The Google
20% time
The Hackathon
Timeboxed build
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

64. The Google
20% time
The Hackathon
Timeboxed build
The Lab
Startup in a Corp
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

65. The Google
20% time
The Hackathon
Timeboxed build
The Lab
Startup in a Corp
The Facebook
Hyper segmentation
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

66. Product Life Cycle
You are here
Introduction DeclineMaturityGrowth
Salesvolume
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

67. Product Life Cycle You’re
heading here
Introduction DeclineMaturityGrowth
Salesvolume
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

68. Beat the feature factory
Ditch the timeline & solve real problems
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

69. Beat the feature factory
Ditch the timeline & solve real problems
Conquer that beast of a backlog
Separate strategy from execution
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

70. Beat the feature factory
Ditch the timeline & solve real problems
Conquer that beast of a backlog
Separate strategy from execution
Learn to love experimenting again
Build in safe space for validation
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

71. Beat the feature factory
Ditch the timeline & solve real problems
Conquer that beast of a backlog
Separate strategy from execution
Learn to love experimenting again
Build in safe space for validation
Disrupt yourself
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean Contact: @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com

72. Grow
Up Lean

73. Thank you!
I’m Janna Bastow
Let’s go for or and talk product
to @simplybastow or janna@prodpad.com
Slides: bit.ly/growing-up-lean