Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams

by Jeff Gothelf

Teams using Lean UX must be empowered to decide for themselves which features will create the outcomes their organizations require. To do this, teams must shift their conversation with leadership from one based on features to one centered on outcomes. This conversational shift is a radical one. Product managers must determine which business metrics require the most attention. What effect are they trying to create? Are they trying to influence customer behavior? If so, how? Are they trying to increase performance? If so, by what measure? These metrics must be linked to a larger business impact. Leadership must set this direction. If not, teams must demand this shift of them. Teams must ask, “why are we working on this project?” And, “how will we know we’ve done a good job?” Managers need to be retrained to give their teams the answers to these questions. They must be given the freedom to work with their teams to determine which features best achieve these goals. Teams must move from feature roadmaps to backlogs of hypotheses to test. Work should be prioritized based on risk, feasibility, and potential success.