A Lean Roadmap
I recently started working with a new client, an early stage startup looking for some help with working process. In my work to create a picture of what they were doing, I created what I think is a useful tool, and I wanted to share it with you.
Three Chunks: Strategy, Assumptions, Actions
One of the things I do when working with teams is to visualize how the work people are doing relates to the strategy the organization is pursuing. To do that, I often start by just writing out the organization’s strategy and how they are planning to achieve that strategy.
I also usually work with agile teams, and for the most part, these teams keep track of their to-do list in some kind of backlog of actions, often managed on a Kanban board. This client didn’t have that, so I started to put one together for them.
As you move from strategy to action-planning, Lean Startup teaches us to identify risky assumptions and to test them early and often. In Lean Startup, this step — working with assumptions — is the link between strategy and action. So I started to try to capture what I thought were the riskiest assumptions.
The Lean Roadmap
I wanted to see all those pieces in one view. And when I created that view in Trello, I ended up with this: a Lean Roadmap.
The Lean Roadmap captures these three concepts, strategy, assumptions, and action, and allows you to see the whole end-to-end logic of the effort in one left-to-right view. Let me walk you through it. (If you don’t have a basic understanding of Kanban, the discussion that follows may be confusing to you. You should Google that.)
Strategy
The the far left, you capture strategy. I’m basing this on Richard Rumelt’s Strategy Kernel. You list the diagnosis—the problem you’re trying to solve as a company — and a small number of big bets that you’re placing in the current period. Crucially, strategy means saying no, so the next card, “Not Doing” lets you mark certain things out of scope. You can’t boil the ocean. You shouldn’t try.
Risks
The two risks lists allow you capture your risky assumptions. What are the things that might cause us to fail to achieve our strategy? What are the things that might cause our bets to fail? List everything you can think of in the first Risks column. Use the second column, High Priority Risks to pull out a few high-priority risks to focus on first. Be honest and respect the work-in-progress (WIP) limit here. You probably can’t work on more than a few big risks at a time.
Outcomes
Outcomes are the things you’re trying to change in the world. You’re trying to create repeat users, or increase average order size, or get your first customer. They are the thing you’re going to measure to let you know that you are making progress on your strategy and your bets.
Learning Goals
Startups exist in an environment of uncertainty and imperfect information. So you’re always trying to manage that by increasing the amount and quality of information you have. But you can’t learn about everything: you need to focus. What do you need to learn in order to eliminate a high-priority risk?List your learning goals in this column.
Backlog
All of the columns to the left of this one, Backlog serve as input to creating your backlog. Look at your bets. Look at your risks. Look at the outcomes you’re trying to achieve. Look at your learning goals. All of these suggest action. What action will you take? What are you going to do? Keep track of the things you’d like to do here.
Doing, Ready for Review, Done
These are pretty straightforward: your basic Kanban workflow columns. Your team is likely to have its own process here, and you should feel free to adjust this section, play with WIP limits, etc.
Process Improvement Questions
Finally, it helps teams to spend time examining their working process and making conscious choices about how to improve it. Use the final column to track questions and issues you want to raise in your next team retrospective.
What do you think?
I’m sharing the template as a public Trello board. Feel free to clone the board as a starting point for your work. If you use it, if you like it, or if you don’t, please share your thoughts as comments to this post.
