Jeff Gothelf

The term Lean has become widely popular, particularly with the word “startup” attached to it. This has led many people to believe this is an approach to work relevant only to new companies or initiatives. Lean-curious companies who have tried to implement these ideals often stall at one or two teams citing organizational complexities, politics and dependencies as insurmountable obstacles to Lean Startup at scale.

Can Lean Startup practices be scaled — not just as culture and philosophy but as tactical process? In this practical presentation, Jeff will share several methods for scaling Lean Startup techniques in large organizations exemplified in detailed case studies and professional experience. Jeff will cover knowledge management, intra-team dependencies, infrastructure requirements and several other elements of ensuring successful Lean Startup practices in companies of any size.

This hands-on class focuses on managing teams and their activities in an effort to build and scale successful lean practices. We will work together as a group to identify what an ideal process looks like, what gets in the way of implementing it and design explicit tactics to overcome these obstacles. We’ll combine the ideas behind Lean Startup, Agile, Lean UX and modern management to create specific frameworks you can bring back to the office. It’s also a great opportunity to connect with, share experiences with, and learn from peers–leaders who are in a similar position as you.

This is the class for you if:

• You’re managing multiple product teams and want to get better at coordinating their activities.
• You’re a senior practitioner or team leader who has run at least one lean experiment, and you’re trying to get better at running experiments.
• You’re currently working on an agile team, but it feels strangely “waterfall-ish.” You’d like to move to a more continuous and iterative feedback-based process.
• You have product discovery activities and product delivery activities, but they’re not as well-integrated as you’d like.
• You want to build your capability to lead the change on your team and at your company

• How to align your teams’ efforts to larger strategy and to the needs of your business
• How to frame your teams’ work in a way that encourages exploration and innovation
• How to structure your projects around risk and learning
• How to ensure that risk and learning are considered in every iteration
• How to build consistent product discovery practices into your product delivery cadences