Training: Playing Lean Startup

Duration and language:

Onsite training - 14h - 2 days each 7 hours (including breaks).

Online training - 15h - 3 days each 5 hours (including breaks). Online training schedule:

• 09:00 - 11:00 CET online session,
• 11:00 - 12:00 CET break,
• 12:00 - 14:00 CET online session.

Training is provided in English. A Polish version is also available.

Target group:

The training is intended for:

• innovation and product managers,
• novice Scrum Masters and Product Owners,
• department/team leaders and managers,
• stakeholders and people involved in the development process,
• representatives of non-IT departments such as sales and marketing.

Those who want to grow the organization in the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Training preconditions:

Minimum knowledge of basic concepts in the field of product/services development and project management. Participation in the development and team engagement activities, in particular in initiatives, in which a team of at least several people cooperates, or many teams at the same time.

For online training, it is required to be computer literate and meet technical requirements: https://valkir.pl/en/online-training/.

Price includes:

• Preparation and training performed by an expert, an experienced Lean Startup and Customer Development consultant.
• Effective training in a small group - on average 6-12 people.
• Training materials, requisites and a certificate of training completion issued by Valkir Academy.
• Lunch and catering (drinks and snacks). Not applicable to online training.
• Trainer’s travel and expenses (T&E). Not applicable to online training.

Certification:

Due to the authorial program, the completion of the training provides knowledge and practice to be used in the organization, but does not provide Lean Startup Co certificates. Accredited certificates are associated only with Lean Startup Co. offline courses, which is equal to obtaining a certificate of participation described at https://leanstartup.co/education/. The price of the authorial training includes training completion certificates issued by Valkir Academy (in Polish or English).

Training description:

What is the Playing Lean Startup training?

Playing Lean Startup is an authorial training program with an accredited simulation game Playing Lean that teaches how to steer a startup development, regardless of whether it is started in a garage, in a medium-sized company, or as an isolated unit within a corporation. It shows when to pivot and when to persevere in order to grow the business with maximum acceleration.

The proper use of the Lean Startup concept through the feedback loop from potential customers allows you to quickly validate the prototype of the solution and shorten the time between the team's work and the first satisfied customers.

The foundation of the process is the Build-Measure-Learn loop, which, supplemented with the concept of Validated Learning, Innovation Accounting and the assumption that entrepreneurship is management, allows to introduce innovations in a more predictable way.

You don’t need dry theory and science. Do you want to learn about the Lean Startup concept through practical knowledge, lightweight tools, exchange of experiences and an educational game? We have something for you!

Who’s behind this?

Serial entrepreneur Eric Ries is credited with pioneering the Lean Startup method described in the best-selling book “The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses” published in 2011. The approach itself is based on the work of figures such as Steve Blank, Clayton M. Christensen, or Geoffrey A. Moore.

In 2015, four Lean Startup enthusiasts led by Simen Fure Jørgensen, through a series of experiments and crowdfunding introduced the first version of the Playing Lean educational board game. Since then, the game has become a hit and subsequent rounds of funding have introduced new versions of it.

Training agenda:

1. Introduction to the Lean Startup method: introducing entrepreneurial culture
   • A concise presentation of Lean Startup principles and concepts.
   • A short comparison of the differences in the traditional approach to product and service development versus modern, based on hypotheses, experiments and growth engines.
   • A short presentation of the idea of product thinking, entrepreneurship, innovation, usability and moderation for the entire process.
   • A simulation game that helps to understand and experience aspects of the empirical development process and its improvement.
    
2. Definition and review of the Lean Startup method
   • General presentation of Lean Startup theory, principles and pillars.
   • A brief overview of the Build-Measure-Learn loop concept, process iteration, as well as the stages from the complementary Customer Development concept.
   • Necessary level of engagement of the target audience and key competencies for the initial structure of the startup founder team.
   • Lean Startup or Customer Development? Differences in approach, duration and required preconditions.
    
3. Defining a vision for innovation
   • Methods of defining the problem hypothesis, quantitative and qualitative research.
   • Estimation of the target market. Differences between the total target market (TAM), the available target market (SAM) and the startup target market (SOM).
   • Explanation of the Validated Learning concept, as well as where to look for problem hypothesis confirmation.
   • Exercise: designing experiments and their verification metrics, followed by a discussion of effectiveness in subgroups.
    
4. Steering the innovation direction
   • Popular patterns and anti-patterns of the initial research of the needs of the target group.
   • Explaining the concept of a Minimum Viable Product - MVP and its testing methods.
   • Determining the criteria for defining the key value proposition for the solution (Problem-Solution Fit) and matching the product to the market (Product-Market Fit).
   • An overview of metrics in terms of Innovation Accounting, Pivot and Persevere concept.
    
5. Accelerating the speed of operation and organization growth
   • Overview of popular organizational growth engines and the concept of Growth Hacking.
   • A brief introduction to business model generation techniques.
   • Discussion on designing an organization that learns and adapts to the environment.
   • Exercise: experiences exchange on approaches to product development and incremental delivery of business value.
    
6. Team formation and addressing the human factor
   • Differences between a workgroup and a team based on Tuckman’s cycle.
   • What is and how self-organization and self-management work, along with an explanation of what is necessary for them to function properly.
   • Characteristics of a cross-functional team, division of competences and accountability.
   • Work and accountabilities distribution in the case of many teams co-creating a complex product, project or internal initiative.
    
7. Capital raising and shares
   • A concise presentation of techniques for raising capital from investors, differences in investment rounds, comparison with crowdfunding.
   • Overview of methods for presenting the business model with an intention to obtain approval and its funding based on Pitch Deck and Pitch itself.
   • Vesting as an effective and safe method of gradually acquiring shares by co-founders or key associates in a startup.
   • Brainstorming: good and bad practices of raising capital and transferring shares
    
8. Lean Startup in action
   • Introduction to the mechanics of the Playing Lean educational game, flow and duration.
   • Division into teams, preparation of requisites for the game, selection of scenarios.
   • Moderation of game iterations: discussion of concerns, retrospectives in search of process improvement, monitoring progress through metrics.
   • Open discussion of reported questions, challenges and doubts as well as the next steps necessary to introduce the Lean Startup method in the organization.
    
9. Training summary

Training goals:

What are the challenges we address?

• How can I explain to others what exactly a Lean Startup is?
• How can I improve the process of defining and verifying hypotheses about the needs of the target group?
• How can I use the concept of validated learning, innovation accounting and growth engines to increase the chance of success of an innovative product or service?
• How can I shorten the feedback loop through Lean Startup?
• How can I determine what should be part of the MVP of a new product or service?
• How can I check that we have reached the Problem-Solution Fit and Product-Market Fit stages?
• How can I coordinate, monitor and measure experiments and strategic goals?
• How can I supplement the Lean Startup method with additional practices and tools from the Lean/Agile family?

What benefits do you get?

The training allows participants to better understand their organization, the challenges it faces and more effectively steer its growth. It contains theoretical knowledge and practical methods taken from the idea of product thinking, entrepreneurship, innovation, usability, facilitation, process management, change management and many other areas.

As a result of this training, participants from different areas of the organization will:

• know and understand aspects needed to effectively stimulate innovation in an organization i
• acquire skills necessary to apply mentioned methods in practice,
• understand how and why new methods can positively affect their work.

Whenever possible, topics presented during the training are explained through a game/exercise that allows to apply the learned practice or principle in the business context. Exercise or game usually ends with a debrief and discussion on how to adapt the presented practices to the participants’ context.