BUILDING OPERATIONS FOR A STARTUP - SHOW 10: CREATING YOUR TESTING VARIABLES - PART 2 - WILLIAM EASTMAN

This the second part of the most important action you will take as a startup - getting your first offer right quickly. It must be a better match for the market, timed correctly, and as fast as possible without burning your startup capital. Once it is built and released - it has to be marketed and sold.

EPISODE 33: HOLDING EXECUTIVE SESSIONS
There is allot here to unpack, so I am going to move quickly. The goal is to validate everything done to date and this is the end of the Research and the beginning of Design Phase.

Topics:

• Selecting the right customer - A review
  • Part of a fast growing industry and/or market
  • Unsatisfied or neutral about the current offer purchased
  • Willing to help design a solution for them?
• First Meeting
  • Share the big picture - who you are, what you are trying to accomplish as a company - create a desire to be affiliated
  • Focus on the offer - why this offer, what you have researched and learned to date - surprise and intrigue with your understanding
  • Overview: Physical characteristics, What does the Offer Do, What additional Value does it provide
  • Schedule Second Meeting - allow the customer to share and discuss internally and create a second meeting to capture their requirements
• ​Second Meeting
  • ​Restate the objective for the meeting - what new offer are you building to solve which customer problem
  • Work with the group to fine tune the offer's goal - what problem will it solve
  • Inquire about the positives and negatives of the offer currently being purchased
  • Create a list of customer needs; ensure you capture both what it must do (results) and what will make it user-friendly
  • Request volunteers to help in the design and build process
  • Schedule third meeting for gaining closure on the list
• Third Meeting
  • Prior - clean the list and rework into your design process
  • Share your list for agreement
  • Solicit participants for Focus Groups

EPISODE 34: RUNNING FOCUS GROUPS
In the previous episode you have achieved much - found a partner for the offer, gained their insights into what they would buy if it was available at the right price point, and help in the production phase of the project.

The Focus Group's role in the beginning is to validate the requirements for results and user-friendliness by talking to the people doing the work.

​We will come back this later as the prototype is being built. The Agilean Process requires the Focus Group to test the prototype as it is being built.

Topics:

• Group members - marketing, sales, production, distribution, service
• Create a group charter for working together
• Have each person (1) discuss their role in the company, and (2) their role with the new offer
• Share the requirements list and have them prioritize the items in 2 lists: (1) results, (2) user-friendliness
• Solicit for requirements missing from the list, add, and re-rank
• Review the final list and gain agreement

EPISODE 35: FINALIZING OFFER CHARACTERISTICS
We are almost done with the design phase, at least for customer requirements. Once we have a final prioritized list, it is time for your team to go to work and build a prototype.

Topics:

• Fourth Executive Meeting
  • Share results from focus group and finalize the weighted design characteristics
  • Request that members of the focus be available to help during production to ensure we are building what we promised

EPISODE 36: THE AGILE PRODUCTION PLAN
OK, this seems to have taken forever but understand one of the dynamics of building world-class products and services - you must go slow early to go fast later.

In Show 4 we covered the key questions to start build the prototype. Let's take that a little deeper.

Topics:

• What Is The Design?
  • ​Build a model of the initial process
• How Are You Going to Test It?
  • ​Do a walk through, imagine what happens at each step and record the initial brainstorm
• What Must You Learn to Build It Right?
  • ​Based on the walk through and brainstorming - make 3 lists: based on facts, where are you certain (no assumptions); based on a few assumptions - where do you have reasonably certain; what don't you know

This is list is where the Design Phase and the Development meet.

Next Show: The Agilean Design, Development, and Production Processes

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