Links option, you high level, you need to allow a group of people to do successful. It's about a limit. What is the vision? And then you try to align, what is the MVP? The minimum viable product? What's that? Very first step. When you think about a minimum viable product, you need to think about it from three angles, the business angle the users, and then the engineers getting those three perspectives together. So they align and the site. Okay. What is that?
Very first step. Hey everyone. My name is Henry Surya be Robin. And you're listening to the tekhelet journal. The show will be bringing you the greatest technical leaders practitioners and thought leaders in the industry to discuss about their Journey ideas and practices that we all can learn and apply to build a highly performing technical team and to make an impact in your personal work. So let's dive into our Journal. Hi, everyone. Another Goes by.
And I'm back here again with a new episode of the tekhelet journal podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in and spending your time with me today, listening to this
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Caroli Paulo is a principal consultant at thoughtworks co-founder of agile, Brazil and the author of the bestseller, lean Inception, and the reason fun retrospectives. I learn about lean Inception. When I used to work at thoughtworks, and during my time there, I found that lead Inception is one of the key techniques that thoughtworks uses in many Klein engagements to bring everyone.
Together come up with a successful product vision and create alignment between multiple stakeholders involved. And hence. Most of the projects that started with an exception will most likely result in a successful project delivery in this episode Paulo share with me the history of thought Works Inception. How it evolved into the current Lynn Inception and its connection With The Lean Startup movement.
He also explain the similarities and differences between Lynn Inception and the other well-known design Sprint, including the interesting story on how both techniques were developed almost at the same time and why they ended up quite similar, but different in a few strategic ways Paulo.
Also shared an example, how to come up with a good product Vision, the concept of MVP canvas and the importance of Shifting, our mindset project mindset to product mindset in the second half of our conversation. Paolo then shared his latest contribution, fun retrospectives, which brings together many different techniques to conduct effective. Retrospectives. He explained. The reasoning behind the fund
techniques. Share some of those fun activities that we all can try in our next retrospectives, including the interesting token of appreciation technique. He also emphasized the importance of psychological safety and facilitation skills in a good retrospective. And if you are interested to find out, My examples of fun retrospectives that you can try. You can check them out on his website at fundraiser respectives.com.
I hope you will enjoy this episode and if you like it, consider helping the show by living it a rating review or comment on your podcast app or social media channels, those reviews and comments are one of the best ways to help me get this podcast to reach more listeners and hopefully they can also benefit from the contents in this podcast. Let's get this episode. Started right after our short
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I have a special guest. His name is Paulo Carly. He's a colleague of mine last time in thought works. So he wrote a book called lean inception. For those of you who are not aware of, it is actually one of the technique that works use still doing I guess for all customers before they start a project.
They will conduct a little Inception and understand what the products come up with the agreement about how to build the products, how to put your products until you come up with an agreement of what kind of MVP that you want to build. It is a very good technique. And so I'd love to have a talk today with Paulo to understand further, but Linens, option and also to share with all of you Sao, Paulo. Welcome to the show. Thanks for agreeing for this. Thank you. Thank you.
It's a pleasure to be here. Sao, Paulo. Maybe to introduce yourself in the beginning. Maybe telling about your career Journey or highlights and turning points. Sure. So I'm Paulo Caroli. I am Brazilian. I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, but I went through the software engineering school. I did a master in Brazil, and then I went to Silicon Valley those back in the day, so, The late 90s, there was a whole fish current of developer.
I used to go to the Hoops, La conférence a big conference in us and fell in love with Silicon Valley. And one of the trips to the conference event acidic environment, like, oh, I want to leave here. So I moved to Silicon Valley, spent eight years there. I worked on quite a few startups when I got in West, which was in 2000 because of object-oriented is total can't pack which wrote the book extreme program explaining and then I met him in 2000 and then I start following those things.
That they were called the child. It was one of the reasons that I went to work for fought works because a lot of those folks quite a few of those went to worked for fought work. So I did the same when I joined falters. I always had that Lee startup thing on me like a real like that side, but I also like the Jets on side and the pot works. You should work for big clients. Then I started traveling a lot, serve organizations and move to Asia in Europe, back to Brazil
from a developer. I start being a facilitator. One thing I realized I was pretty good. Getting people together through a lie about something. You should the beginning of the project was a very important part fast for a developer who work for six months, one year. And you don't see your product, like be successful. It was really bad. And then I start getting involved from the beginning phase, what's called an
exception demo. Well, what can we do to better align, so we have a great success with our product, our team. And then from 2011 forward, I start to concentrate those in Saturn's to be more lean lean, asked likely shorter and more. Active. Imagine that tunnel with such. I will try to be more effective now 2011, like 10 years after the German faster and we could be even better before. The beginning of the bridge was
an exception. But was like, oh, let's understand all the user stories and then installs and laugh. And I realised, thanks, God. I used to live in Silicon Valley and they was following the movements from there. We gave a name to to Lean Startup and we should start with the MVP. That's why the Inception it's leave because of in start-up. It was a big shift on my career and I think I'm fought works in the projects that I was working. Working nearby. That's why I lease option.
Start spreading the word around the globe in Brazil. It's a big thing because it was living there thing from 2011, 2019, which was really good. And because I had three kids in Brazil. During those years. I was not traveling abroad to a lot. So it's doing a lot of cleaning Setters for precision components. So in Brazil, like everybody's doing exceptional days, 2019 and moved to Europe. And now, if the remote will, I start doing morning settings all
over the Globe, remotely. Now, I think that the word spread and faster, so maybe if you can share, what is Lynn Inception in high level summary for people who are not aware of it? Sure. Links option, high level. You need to allow a group of people to do successful. That's it. It's about a limit. Usually, go to a company Corporation or product. It doesn't matter. There is efficient. Hey, that's amazing. That's a visual who we are. All going to be rich, very
successful. Yeah, and then what and then you need to align is this strategy like what's the path? Traditionally, we would go with the stratagems like a long train wreck. We need to do these and these and that and that we realize the woods, not like that. So only sexual life that group of people. Okay? What is the vision? And then we try to align, what is the aim to be the minimum viable product? So we are okay with division would support have division. But what's that very first step.
It's very hard to lie about that very first step because when think about a minimum viable product, you need to think about it, from three. The business angle, which is super important business behind it.
It doesn't matter if you're a small comparable countries, that business the users because you always build something for someone to use and like, you want the users to love it and then the engineers because you need to do it right when you put those three people together to figure out what is that minimum. It's not that easy because each one has different perspective and they want different things. So nice about it, getting those three perspectives together. So they align and the site.
Okay, what is that? Very first step and you And it's also a revolution since it was created before, right? Like you mentioned the portion of the lean so it becomes mean Inception. So, how do you actually combine this Lean Startup movement with this Inception? And how does this relate to design? Thinking, to me? It sounds little bit similar. Yeah. No, it's definitely has a lot of influence from. So, I think you have to put this in perspective. I was in u.s.
From 2000 to 2008. So I was there in the beginning of th eye movement. So, How you transpose, chime movement, but I wasn't developed. So I had the pain off own Sprouts, not successful because like a build something, and no one's using. This is from 2000-2008 before that on the 90s. I was object oriented person. So I like object-oriented analysis, design implementation, all the things that used to have
like years ago. But from that, there was something interesting because we used to have Inception phase Factor original created. Uml. Another thing they create was the rational unified process, which was a child like the industry. Is moving towards which are more agile and group was one of those first met adults that show them today. If you look at it, like, oh, it was so slow. But that I'm stressed. And then they named that beginning of the understanding of what we need to do on a
project as an exception. So when I went to us and we start with the achaia movement. Now, we start doing more like a fat giant sections, where we understand everything we need to do for that project. We used to use the word closure. You the map it to user stories for it. Another colleague of ours just that he wrote abuser start mapping. That's from that period where we try to understand everything, the users, their Journey. The business needs and remember everything to user stories.
And we do this huge release planning with all the Springs. Those three, two, one, two, three, even estimate. Everything. And have story point and has burned up for own. We're going to deliver 300 story points and have that release plan for one year, nowadays looking back. I'm like, wow, I was crazy to do that. Why I'm saying this because like in 2011, they start that movement is Silicon Valley.
They're like hey, I don't care about doing a charm not we cannot do the product for one year to see if it makes sense to the user. Let's do something. The minimum thing we can do to validate if you're going in a good direction and that's the entropy. So the link separate is a shift from Latin understand overall project to. Yeah, that's talked about the vision and then figure out how do we get started?
So the focus is not more on real easy planning of the, all the user Stories, the focus, like, okay. How do we Start when you talk about them a bit. Now the folks not that much on what we're all these stars behind it. It's more like where you find the day. What I Potter for today, you know, let's talk about business, the user experience. And then the Aging your side. What is the minimum we can do to
validate your going? A good direction, of course after the except sure if you are a software delivery team, you break it, you choose. Sorry, but now became much easier because it's much smaller and if Parts aligned, so that's the shift only exceptions like bringing that. Start up thinking as a centerpiece in throat come like a center result of that alignment.
And of course as a set which 2011 design thinking as a movement something that was getting more and more popular throughout I myself and I'm really good facilitator, besides being a software engineer that like process and Improvement, a really good facilitator. So I brought all of my facilitation skills on cultural a group of people from different perspectives. You need a lot of eye skills, like handling both States, the cluster and do a fishbowl. Kind of stuff. The book has two sides.
Once like a, let's talk about them to be, it's very important. We should focus on it. The sequence of activities, they work. Well really well, so if you want to figure out, okay, how shall I group of people do them DP? You can do. Like, I did took me like four or five years to figure out a good segments of activities that went well, and I was running cetera, like, almost every week or you follow that recipe, that you're going to figure out how we follow these. We achieve great results,
attend. So that's the link steps techniques of the Activities and the sequence and why MVP with some tips and ideas on, how do you facilitate it? How about the design thinking? Because design thinking, I mean, we also have this print design, right? Sounds like it's also similar time frame where you envision. What do you want to build? And you have an MVP at the end of it. So, what's the difference here, design, Sprint. In Inception, right? I find it fascinating, Jake a nap.
He was also in Silicon Valley, right? I think he's a little younger than me. I was more of a developer who was more of a designer. You have the difference there, but he was leaving Silicon Valley. We went through similar companies. He was feeling the same pain that I was trans like, damn it. I need to align these people to figure out what they're going to do. Even as a poisonous. I was a consultant at Google for one year. The same time that he was there
as well. We almost work on the same thing was very interesting. If I remember in front, of course, like both of us were not famous about like remember others designed to do, which I like his style. I could see is a good facilitator, Google shoot. So welcome different teams. What? Happening is in common, both of us, use design thinking both States and okay, how to align people. The Double Diamond open the options and then you close some
options. Both of us, have that same Style Both of Us. Came to the conclusion that like do know what it is a week. It is a five-day thing. I have time sometime whether I would make it or sometimes would make it shorter. If re shorter. You don't have time to have a brainstorm. It's more like if you try to do something in science, printer Inception one day. Probably someone telling that's
what I want to go figure. If you have an a week, you can open the options and then make a decision process. That then the thing is, like, from the time, I was working on Google went to India and they were always running status for UK. And then I went to Brazil. So I was not following what he was doing and he was not following what I was doing Special, that I was writing a lot in Portuguese, and we came to a lot of similarities based on practical experience. But the place where we do
virtue, where we do difference. And of course, this has to do for backgrounds, he has that week about the design team. So he is Is more focus on the design. So get that people that we figure out the design, they will have some options for the designer. Put in front of users is going to get like five users. For example, they will test and then they'll decide. Okay. We have one Winnie prototype, but based on a design on interface at the end result.
It's a prototype, it comes from the design world. I come from this doctor. I come from my childhood where we used to have the user story, that's tells you exactly what's the file its going to bring, how I'm going to implement and Even testing the face. I don't want that as an entity as I named the be, I want to be very clear. What do I want to validate? But I don't want to specify the how so it's a big difference to know. If at the end of the week, we have a prototype and use the
prototype for something bigger. That's design. Sprint on the link section. You are like a group of people of the vision and you have planned for them to be but you do not have a prototype, use the product for something bigger MVPs, a plan for something small that first. Step. That's a major difference. Is that strategic difference? If you think, you know, we're going to know the big picture. If you are read a line about what you want Zayn Springs, if you wanna lie about what we
want. How do we start link section or you combine both and then it's amazing. So then my next question will be, how often do you run? This Linens option? Is it like if you have a new product only or is it? Like, even if you have a product, you can continuously run these inceptions from time to time, maybe quarterly or something like that. What's the Frequency to run? This kind of inception? First? I want to bring another person
which I really admire his work. Marty cake Mark Kagan writes a lot and talks a lot about product teams that you should have a product team and everybody's together. So, in the perfect world, if you have a very strong product team, everybody's together the whole time, they're doing continuous Discovery. They are line. It is the same team. You probably don't need the inside from because the team's aligned, they are doing Discovery and they are also developed the product.
They know what they need to do. Do just do it continuously, but it's very rare to find those people and sometimes difficult the company to structured organization with product. Image. Majority of organizations are go through, even though I love those stories about product teams. That's what we should Aspire for. But sometimes we're not there and then we need somehow to get some people together chow line. Okay, what we're going to do. What is the vision?
Sometimes, you do have some scope, we're going on. So some people that they discover get together some business people that maybe they're not. Of the protein, do not get the whole time and then they change years. Unfortunately, they are not sitting together with the project team the whole time. Then you need an exception. So when there is a, uh, moment, new feature coming or important thing, that we need to align, that's perfect for an inset from if the group get aligned and it
is the same group. Probably don't need another interception because the red line your line about the visual and the MVP not about continuously working or people teach a little bit, like it's normal work. It's not an insect. Anymore. If the pivot, it's a huge change of Direction. Then you need to lie again, then you do an exception. It's not like continues. Deliver course, content Discovery. It is. Okay. Let me try and get together
online. So if I understand correctly is that every time you have probably a potential difference in terms of vision and Alignment, you will conduct this Lynn Inception. In order to bring everybody towards the same vision and towards the same environment in order to build the same kind of understanding of MVP or in terms of product. Is that a correct? Understanding perfect words, I never knew. Either alya real life people about Visual and density.
That's a cultural exception and it's also critical to have these three types of people from Business, from The yes, and also from users. I will say it's critical to have those three perspectives because sometimes you go to a start-up and you do not have a lot of people because they're shocked that even though you don't have the three kinds of people you want to invite the three perspectives in the room. So I did run inside for a very smart entrepreneur.
The second day where me trick About the personas and the journeys. He dressed differently broadcast seems as if he were the Persona. Like, I thought that amazing because he was inviting the perspective of the users. Of course, there's more to start up, right? Big companies is different because imp accomplice, you wanna invite the people that represent those two respects and you do have sometimes more than one people.
And then the chance, like okay, there are people who are how they align in the startup invited perspective, even though you do not have people, or I don't have all the engineer seen, But You Wanna invite a date? Perspective each of them. So maybe if you can walk through in terms of high level. What is typical agenda of Al in Inception? Sure. First. I like to think about it from outside in first. What is the goal of the week? What is the vision? And what is the MVP?
So if that's the goal of the week before that week, you need to understand why I'm bringing the group together to talk about the vision. So problem there was a night versus a lot. We component that use a lot of project and not old style but more traditional approach Korean. And finance oriented pro has a portfolio of projects and send one of the initial hate is a really good project and I'm like, okay got an approval.
And then after you get approval, maybe the during sex, if you're a company doing like Discovery, a lot of Discovery going on and looks like by comparing those five different doctors. This one's a winner. Let's do an Insight on that one. Show due to different sites. Our customers search. You have a lot of customer, research and data and user research. Oh cool. Looks like we have something here.
Call for a link sadness. There's something that happened before an exception or even a design Sprint. That's the design Sprint and prototype of big thing. Okay. Now, how do we start even test a few users but like you use now in each week about entropy and really validated. So, put in the hands of the user only invited down to test the Prototype, which is amazing, but let's not figure out what is the entropy that we're going to put in our hands. So call for a new Snapdragon.
So I talk to about what happens before they go off the week because there is that go of the week the week. Need to start for kickoff. What's the key? You tell the story of what happened before? Hey, we're here like 10 15 people together because this is the top priority project for a company. Here's the differing wax research.
Here's the data from the business request, like whatever information have that's shared on the kickoff, and then the main sponsor, whoever that person is probably make a beautiful speech. Hey, we're here. It's going to be amazing, the best team ever. The best Enterprise, the best product, whatever, so kickoff speech from the main sponsor information of why we're here. Why did you call for these links? 74. Disa initiative and three.
You should myself or whoever's the facilitator to bring the importance of? Hey, you know, what's in start-up. Do you know what? Same CPU will talk about the big Vision, but at the end of the week, you're going to have X zp to get. There were going to follow this agenda. So you need to bring that Master on the agenda. It's a very important message that you need to bring on the cuff. Why is that? Because you want to bring it up like hey, whoever stay in the
room. I want respect from the business from the users and from the engineer. Together is not like the old world where someone okay, here is the business. Requirement document. Here's the data from the users. Here are the engineers. They need to separate meetings and then through all those documents. Let's hire consultancy figure out and tell me what I should do. No. No, we don't work like this anymore. Yeah, let's talk about this and a half price. Listen, let's talk about user.
Of course. Listen, let's talk about engineers are very resistant. And then together, we are going to figure out what Stanley P. It's not external thing that some opala karate. He's really smart draw, all the information in and at the end you bring the plan for them. No, not at all. In fact, there is no such thing as a perfect plan for MVP. The perfect thing is like, people are lying about that plan and they'll make the plan of
success. They'll make the trend of success, not because they followed the plan because they are aligned, they know what they want, and they will pivot together, especially work with them with me with people a lot. So it's not about the plan is about to be aligned. So that strong message is on the cuff. Now that I have this, Drug message. Also on the cough you tell. Okay, Friday, 3:00 p.m. We're going to have a showcase, a review of the week.
Well, it's going to be nowadays in Euro, whatever to use past year. It's going to be on the walls here everything we did but we're going to show you the final outcome, which is what is the vision? What is the plan for them? So I invite you stakeholder, that would love to be here. But I do know you don't have time to be here because you have other things going on. I invite you to come back here Friday at 3 p.m. And we have a conversation or it over sessions.
At the presentation because I want to hear your input as well to see if whatever plan we come up with. It's a good plan. So that's the beginning and the end of the week. Now. I'm going to go day by day. They won. It's more about understanding more about the business context. We rely invalidated business context to use that product vision statement from Jeffrey Moore. What is this product what? It's not and if possible bring a product perspective, right? We need to make that shift from
projects to product. So that's why I use the product Vision to know whatever your To keep that as a box. It is a box of product to deliver something. What is the name that goes in the box? If you love the product template statement, everybody together, it's different than the statement that comes from the product manager of the product owner. The business owner know, we are going to kill it together because we're together here in the were all understood, what we
want out of this. So first thing, a lot of things about everybody's together. It's a little bit more from the business perspective, right? They chew it's a little bit more from the user perspective. Let's share the information we have about on the personas. If you had user research this deeper in the room together and together we shared information. It's not a presentation together.
We are drawing, who do we believe are the personas that we think will be backed by the singular beauty of where the personas you should talk about before making decisions. And then the Chinese were the user Journeys. That those personas go to solve their problems today. That's it. It's like they want. Respect from the business that you perspective from the personas. They create a freeze of product attribute. It's a feature brainstorm.
Okay. Now that we look at the business goals, the Persona needs, which feature, should we build to fulfill those business goals, and to help achieve those personas needs? If you look at the journeys, it might be easier to find the feature ideas, but it might look at the Persona needs at the business goes and that's it. It's a feature brainstorming. You have some boundaries around it. You're not starting with a free children, instrument is very dangerous.
Sometimes you get the engineers and they won't start from the future brainstorming from the technical perspective. No, no, like when you put the future brainstormed, it's hard for me to say because I'm a engineer myself, but When you do the future, brainstorm on day three, they're more boundaries around it. So even if you come up with an amazing technique, right? You like it has a mistaken idea to. So some of the, probably different abuser of the users. It's important to have those
followers. Otherwise, we going to glued myself on that as Engineers many times, you think about the solutions before think about the pros. So when it is on day three, it makes you think it's more about the problem than the solution and then it, we also start making a review for each of those feature. And that's That's its. I'm thinking again, you're opening the office writer than fish grease from your opening. We're not think about them to pee yet.
So it's a brainstorm and then they trained before you start to make a review of all those features. We understand that an isolated. It's like small Lego bricks. We know the vision. We don't know what Stanley be but to talk about possible species of those rigs. Those features and the review. Each one of them individually from the perspective of the business, the users and the technology and then what you do on day, five in the morning, He is. Okay.
Now that we talk about often visual look back at those user Journeys, and answer the question, how to improve their lives with our features. And once we start answering this question, you have a sequencer in which order should we work on those features to fulfill those needs? But wait a second. We are nailing section and now is the time of this strategy, right? So in all the information, how do you think big?
But start small invalidate and then this goes on the sequencer and usually the sequencer people go. Oh, I think he is the MVP, but people need to talk about. What is the next increment? What do you think will come after? That? It's also part of the strategy even though we will focus on them to be the following week, the business trip. Especially we need a strategy. That's not only the first step. Your first lap is also influenced by what we think we
have enough. And then from that you go to the MVP canvas, which goes in Greater detail about that very first step. And that's the final day they five and showcase. So if I can summarize probably from the beginning, you have the kickoff from the project sponsor. I think the right mind set, the right goal for everybody within this Inception workshop.
And then, on day one, you talked about the business, you set up the vision, what the product is all about, and set a vision that everybody agrees, they to is about user perspective. Understand sona's, user Journeys involved. They tree is about feature brainstorming what this product would have in terms of capabilities and features. And The crucial thing is about setting the boundaries not to come up with the features without Vision, but coming up
from Vision into the future. Yes, and then they for you do some kind of review from the tag from the ux, from the business perspective. And then on day 5, you agree. What kind of MVP that you want to build, including the sequence of the pictures that you want to build and then the last deliverable will be the MVP conference. Exactly. Well, when your party thing about the tree is, if your product, it's a little more technical data, we might get a little more technical as well.
It's okay, when you do the freaky brainstorm, as engineer know that, sometimes we need to get into some technical details. It's Okay, don't get into too much detail because you don't know yet. What's 1050? Because our first level just for us to understand those those blocks. And all those features make sense in terms of vision. You mentioned, there's a
template that you came up with. So maybe if you can share because to me Vision sounds a little bit vague right about so many things but what is a good template for division? The first thing you realize is Visions way, I'm not talk about the organization of these. You think this is very important. I'm talk more about that. Product vision and I like the word product. It's not a project, the product, even if you are within a project scope, you need to figure out and building something.
What is this? Sometimes people are not very sure. We're building at Microsoft's, know it. What are you building imaginative is in a box. Where is the box? Who are you building for? What needs do these people have? What is different from what you have today? What is the main thing that in your beauty is bringing to this people. So Jeffrey Moore jeffandmarie is amazing writer. I really liked his work on his
book, Crossing the cows. He was really good on the early adopters on that graph that he makes like, oh, you have their doctors and then you need to go to the early majority. It's hard. That's where the links are for kind of fit. We kind of already agree that 20 think we have a solution to do you have that on the kickoff? How's the tell me? What is the product? So he has a product Vision template.
So the template I use is from Jeffrey's more, which is amazing Reddit in go, his book from 1991. The template goes like this for, that's what I find. It's amazing. I don't even think it's grammatically. Correct. In English. You start the sentence for who is this thing that you come up with? Who were they nice that these people have for, who, the, what is the name of the thing? Your beauty? Give it a name and then, like, a product means, any more like
that box needs a name. What is that box? It's a mobile app. It's a collection of apis. It's a data mesh. What is it? Because sometimes we confuse it. Product is a project. It's a team. What is it? That were the main characteristic of that thing or those people today, without that boxer, put in front of them, our product? What is the main differentiator? I find that template amazing because it forces you to think about all those perspectives to start with few start from there.
So I'm not going from the organization's Vision perspective. I'm not going for all the teams aligned on that box because later on at the end of the week, I want to even a smaller boxes, not even a bottle. The MGP, but I need to start from somewhere, but I'm not going to start from somewhere. You Joe. What's the organization of these old Tesla of issues to make this a better world through the environmental?
Yes, talk about the product creation, put this in perspective, the shift from product to product as a product. That's why I like Market Kagan because you talk about product team, just like data as a product. Like, that's the thing like we need to think about those solutions that were building as a product. And Denise have started. What is the product Vision? Really be can give an Example because just now when you describe it, it's a little bit like in pieces, right?
So maybe if you can take one product example, and come up with the hypothetical vision for us to understand better, if that's okay. I can also view it from the clients because great majority of the Inception of the clients, right? With disclosure their product. We just I'll give you a from the book for people that like playing soccer who need to find other colleagues to play. After work hours, the finder soccer.
Colleagues at is a mobile app that helps connect people to play soccer after work hours or at lunch time unlike well getting fat because it did not find the people or like sending messages on generic WhatsApp group and place. Good groups. Our rad will connect you to people nearby that have the same problem and it should play that game. At the end of the day. That's a product Creation. In fact, it did happen in one of the Inception but was for a community Brazil longer.
They create a mobile app for that, and of course, it's only the vision, right? We haven't talked about them. You can anything, but it get us started. Get it started as the business perspective to users and the technical respect and you should go through all the actives and a week at the end of the week, you have for them to pee. Thanks for giving the illustration. So, the other thing that I find, very interesting from Lynn Inception is the concept of this MVP canvas.
Maybe you can share a bit. What is MVP canvas, starts running exceptions. Also, and 11 and culture works in Brazil. We have Potter Porto Alegre, where I was working at 200 people is a city in the South. We had for example, and portraits received to other cities and I was invited to run all the exceptions tell great.
Majority of them the teams that I would run the reception support legs in the South majority of pressure from some pole will travel some power on and Inception and those things would come back to Porto Alegre where I was living and working. They would go better to the teams that were in receiving even though I was running the same insect. And I was like why is this happened? And then I realized that the weeks after the Inception I would walk by the name of the item select.
Hey, how's that? And we be doing how are you validating them to be? Because we only set to talk about the building blocks of time, the p.m. Like, okay. Now you're getting close like how you're releasing. Are you open it to all a specific group of you? For your courage to hold clients database? Which part of the journey, sorry, validating with them the because on except a couple of turns, but then people is very full.
Right? And I would go like Like, what is the expected result for the MVP? Not for the product? Okay, that and would be that you're releasing. Now. What do you want? I want everybody to play soccer or like that one. What do I measure on that? Empty P. That MP has very few features. What are the metrics that are plugged in to verify it? So I realized that I was making questions that I should have left them written down during the link section.
Even though I would make all those questions, the Inception do just vanish after that, because the teams would go the next week and build user stories and The backlog of work, and that's it. And then you go and delivery mode and you do lose a little bit of that strategy. So I decide to bring this as a canvas on the link section and then all the things would come some dealing exception.
So, when they go to their table and you sit together and have to know the sequencer in the backlog of work next to it, they would have them campus. All they know is that bridge of okay, why we're building these and how we're going to solve the results or how you're going to get information. So then we can converse has seven blocks one.
What is the impurity proposal? Which very narrow focus on them that they write the proposal of these MVPs to validate if people, from that neighborhood, Who download that something really small? It's documented. Personas. Okay. For all the persons over, talk only about amateur soccer players from neighbor or not, talk about them, or professional, the people that own soccer fields, that want to make some money renting, then maybe the coaches.
No. No, this one's only for amateur soccer players, not all over Brazil. Only that one neighborhood where I have one soccer. That I could rent, the user Journeys. What are the user Journeys that their impact on this MVP? Well, this empathy. It's only finding other people to play with you. We cannot share the view. You cannot do this and that, and that you cannot create a tournament. It's only that one. It's very specific or talk about entropy.
Okay, what are the features? Our workout is that we need to get it solved on this empty p 0. We need to make the good of form work, but when I connect with WhatsApp, we want to be calling people, so, okay. We need at least integration with Google form WhatsApp. You Detailed the work. Which did what to expect result. Well, damn it. Okay. Are going to make this work. Oh, we should hire Edwards on Google for that neighborhood. Okay, cool. So let's hire like $200 on that
words. So, $200 with these, we can buy 100,000, click to raise to expect that at least 10% of those will click. And from those of the least, and these number of downloads that and schedule match, qu you in a second, but we should have the any passive they play the match. We should contact them, or Going to contact them know, we figure out. It's a message know, we can call them so that you people. Okay, we expect then it has to
be at least this number. So, you know the Matrix and once you know all of this, what is the cost and schedule? Oh Constance guys. Well, 200 bucks for the Google ads. Well, we need the team. No, don't need the team. We can do this ourselves. Only three weeks we can get this done. And after it's done. We need at least one month collecting data to decide the next steps. That's called cause a schedule. That's it. That's your chemist. It's very narrow Focus or them.
Yeah, if I can probably try to summarize so there are seven different key things in the MVP canvas. The first is was the MVP all about maybe the vision of that particular MVP is not the whole product, definitely and then who are the personas involved and what kind of musician is that? You will build as part of that and BP the features that you committed to build for this MVP. And then what is the expected results or what are the expected results that you want to achieve
with? Mdp, and then you will have to find out some metrics in order to validate those results. And then the last point is about cost and schedule like how much cause you need to build and how long the time required to build the product. So Paula, I know that you also wrote another book called fund retrospectives, right? So the word fun here is very interesting because many people know about retrospectives, but why specifically fun
retrospectives? Yeah. In fact, like I said, I have to live like this link. Second favorite respected. It's just my Things are and both of them. Put people at the center, right? As a lot of facilitation, but like putting people at the center of the dough, making decisions or improving the way they work with respects to influenced by scrum as it was really smart. When they said a you should always have a respect in your streets.
You should have one retrospective per week because sometimes don't you scramble should have retrospect per week. Is that continuous Improvement moment? There. Were you get together for team? And say, hey, let's listen to each other and see, how can we be more effective as a group. It's a moment to listen to each other. To look for process improvements but a lot of the tests should going to people improvements.
It's almost like if you go to therapy every week is that one hour of your therapy, but a group thing for that reason, many times you get the group together. We work on software delivery. The glass is always half full. It's never. The glass is filled know. It's always half full and for some reason, you get people together my reservations, that have a tendency to focus on the - thing we have a tennis jaw say, oh, look the glass half-full. We never celebrate the glasses.
We all said the glass half-empty not have food. So I put the word there for two reasons. Once hey, you should celebrate the achievements and teams when they're happy to deliver more. So if you celebrate that, the glass is half, who is? Much better than if you keep on saying, what do you do to fill up the other half? So, the funder one is strike one to remember, to celebrate the achievements and to make it a light environment because we do need to talk. To both problems as well.
It is important, but in order to be effective and bring difficult conversations, it needs to be a friendly environment. So before getting to, hey, Henry, how are you doing? I need to talk about a problem like, hello. This is the context, let Heaven sighs. Let's laugh. Let's relax. Let's talk about the prime directive and then maybe not, maybe we're going to bring the problem. But like now, the environments is more of a light heart.
So that is why the front showed up there and also our colleague, Pat Kwa. We were together for a few years and he also is really good, the retrospect. He also has a book on retrospective and when I was selecting the name of the book and the website and I like, they pat, I need the name. What should I call it? Then? It'll follow you because make the retrospectives more fun, even though we talk about serious stuff like whenever you're facilitate you make it
fun, make it light. I'm not go far with respect to thank you and then it became Our perspectives. Thanks for sharing the story. So you mentioned a couple of things, very interesting. The first thing is about celebration, right? So what are some of the probably examples of activities that you can do to come up with this celebration within a team? Once very simple, look, you go to retrospect. Usually, like split the born into two or three areas or for when you split the board into
Aries named one of theirs. Thank you and then say, hey on here, please write down. Thank you, notes jerk. Colleagues write down. Why do you want to thank them for usual respects about a period? Like thank you or named one of theirs accomplishment. That's right down the accomplishments we did during
this period. That super simple like I'm not even tell you exactly what retrospect activities but whatever retrospective style Gore activity is Select think about F1 error for thing for acknowledgement for accomplishment as you asked for it people want, right? I think it's human nature. We will talk about the problems if you're going. About the problems have one area and say thank you another one, active super simple. This was more fun presidential, bring a box of chocolate.
And then you named it, a token of appreciation then introduce it as a facilitator. Hey, once part of the respective we are going to appreciate each other. So I have a chocolate box here. Let's please form a circle. I'm going to start. I wanna appreciate Henry for that day. All day. Sprint planning. He was really helpful to me. When he brought these lights and show done, all the things we did last week. So Henry, thank you. And then, I walk too, hairy for box of chocolate.
Harry, get one chocolate and now you appreciate someone else. And then you give him that person a chocolate and verbally. Tell why you're doing it. It's amazing. The result going face-to-face. Thank each other. In front of the group that boost the group, more of, its amazing. Simple. Some box office equipment. I just feel bad because until now I didn't find remote automated like you could say, thank you, but like Chocolate taste, how do we make it happen to remotely do?
How would you do it remotely? Because these days. Everyone is remote, right? Yeah. I did that one remote, like you made a circle and we're all new reference like to put the people's Avatar in circle. And then it's time like one person would walk with a flower to do with other one and verbalize white season. The flour and the Little Flower would stay there in person. I prefer because I like chocolate.
It is something when you receive a compliment and right after that to have a taste of chocolate in your mouth. That's a Amazing home because it's like, you get the government and then your body also gets a cobbler, a nice tasty. It's a really good thing, but when we need to verbalize, at least I know we removed. One thing I did like I did a token of appreciation. I organized the liver chocolate for everybody.
On the meeting. So they all received the package, I said, they are going to receive a fax. Please. Don't open before the retrospective. You can only eat. When you receive the appreciation. It was cool. It work out. Yeah, the one I've experienced before is somebody giving the Post. It's just a posted with maybe a few message. Like, why you think the person. But I can understand that giving it with maybe token of appreciation, like chocolate or flowers or something tangible.
At least it also gives some meaning for you to actually enjoy after that actual message. So, definitely, I think for people, maybe you can try these kind of fun activities, giving a token of appreciation not just like oh States or letters. That will be a good experiment. I guess. Another thing is about light environment, right? I think many people try to make retrospective relief. Really lightweight, but many times. Of course, we talk about problems, right?
How to actually be conscious on making this more lightweight, that's a really good question because we will talk about promise, right? We need to talk about problems and respect it. Is that when you first talked about problems, so how do you handle it? First the context you have to be very clear about the conductor. If the team is on a sad moment like the energy is low, do not make a context that invites for problem. Be cautious about the concept to respect the Super happy.
It's achieving cool. Let's focus on the problems. The team morale is really low. Let's have a great respect to boost morale. So that's part of the contest when you decide what is the concept of the respect, we need to be aware of the moment of the team. Don't choose a context to dig further into problems if the tomorrow it's really low. So first we are with respect to boost morale and then the next one you did for the into problems. So, the context is very
important. After the context, do run a short Energizer. That's a five-minute - to you. You need to break the ice special. Now remote. Because before, when we were presential, you leave the table, you leave the desk and then together, you walk through a room and then as you walk in the room, ok, I'm going to respect. It's similar to when you walk to the psychologists often. Like okay.
I'm physically walking here to a place where I'm going to open my heart rate with respect for the same with work of the room. Now, it's just another meeting. So you need to break the ice if possible. Then there has to be fast. It's not oh, we're going to have an activity, which they want to. Playing here. Now.
We cannot do this. It needs to be fast like five minutes and if possible for subtle message related to what you want to do from it. If you're having problems of self-organizing I Energizer that has a subtle message. From self-organizing teams, you have problems with the user stories Energizer that has a subtle message about a which communicate not only rely on recent documents. So five energized for several measures that do help you with
the contest. So you had the context, you have the energizing, the prime directive, where your mind Beep. Beep about hey, it's not a blind fast. But the prime directive after I energize it gets easier because then Bryce laughs and then you read the sentence. Okay, the environment already better. Let's get remind about the prime directive. And then after that a checking, what is the checking? It's a quick. Let me feel how people are feeling right now in the context of this retrospective.
And then check-ins, like people kind of open their heart or how safe they are feeling before you move on to dig in further. If the checking results show you yes, move forward because people are safe, talk about it. Then you go and dig into the problem and then you do your filtering and then a check out. But before you dig into the problem, have you realized like how many steps you went through and as a facilitator? If you have signals very clear. No am I guess that context the
Energizer explodes group or not? Laughing at all the checking those people are not safe. Don't go in that direction. If we per individual red flags, like I cannot talk. About crabs. I cannot talk about problems and you go talk about problem. Guess what's going to happen? They're going to explode, don't do it. If there's a red flag, what you do? It's like it's a pivot inside the retrospective Hoops, safety slow. We should talk about.
What should you do to increase safety and not talk about what's the problem with continuous integration or whatever? That's the important about planning the retrospect and facilitate. It facilitates. Not only following a plan is like, go through the activities making decisions. Yes, they're moving this direction or that you Clamp, then you trusted the date, right? So, how do you actually do this? Checking is that specific question that you asked.
Are you feeling safe or is there kind of survey? What's the process like on the site from retrospect.com? I organized activities as per those steps their activities for energizer's directives for the prime directive because you have two kinds of friend, direct one about retrospective one about future spectacle which different than one of about team building. So the prime directive Then there are checking activities.
Then there are main course activities for prospective future expectant in building different actors for each. One of those and then checkout activities. Oh, and future activities. So checking activities the most famous one was safe to check but people only did the safety check and that's it. They think about checking like it needs to be fast to verify how people are feeling as they enter before they do the main course. Another example you can do is like one word share with us in
one word. How you're feeling right now in the context of disrespect. Another one is draw your feelings. Please draw her feeling right now because of disrespect, or happiness. Rater. Please share with us on the scale of being really sad. Super happy how you're feeling in average during this period, how you're feeling in every day. During this period, for things related to the business for things, relate of technology for things, reach the process.
It's only a headset or medium face for each of those categories. And then you carry this forward to the next one. Okay, so now tell me why you were feeling this way, you draw something. Now you need to ask them, why you're free to try to gather data. But you as a facilitator based on what you get from the check-in. Okay? Yes. I can move forward safely to this next activity or know that we have safe. You are about sharing and talk about anything. The group's not safe.
Why are going to ask now? Like hey now, let's talk about anything. No, the good to do. They are not safe. It seems that the facilitators role is very Important in this kind of activity. So what would be some good attributes or some good things that facilitator should assess? I know that probably is not like everyone can do this facilitation really? Well. So what are some of the key things? Do you think?
First things, the distinction about the facilitator hat and the participant hat, if your facilitator is respect for your own team, would even be nice. If you drink ahead and talk as a facilitator, remove the head and talk as a participant if you have the A luxury to have an external facilitator, even better because then there's no hat and everybody participates, right? That's the first advice because I know that we need to facilitate a lot of respect for
teams. So, go ahead and say, hey, I'm here is of the data if your talk is a facilitator, facilitate the conversation, don't bring your opinion treat. If you want to bring your opinion, remove the Hat, raise your hand as anyone else. And then talk to know when the moments appropriate. That's the first advice, second, if you're going to facilitate, there is That happens before the respects. It's like talking to different people, trying to understand the moment of that team.
And then think about the agenda to that moment and be careful. Cause sometimes you talk to people and they want too many things for one respect. You want to be a retrospective? Not, let's lock ourselves for one day here. In the room. It's like having five hour session for psychologists know psychologists. Like they do a lot of one-hour sessions at in purpose. Same with respect, others. Don't Bring too much in one session is too much for us to handle.
So when you talk to different people, you need to think about the agenda. The context detectives you're going to bring, so prepare. The agenda for retrospectives can help with that because the combination of actives will make you think about the agenda that checking the main course, the check out the context, the prime directive, your select is a retrofit respective. Once you prepare the agenda, then it's about facilitating potential to the results.
And how do you Create a good environment, then pay attention if it is really good environment. And if it is move forward with your plan, if something goes off track during the focus to the people, not sure agenda. That's the thing. Like look at the people, see how they are feeling. Don't move forward in their plan, or dig into a problem or something. If someone's not feeling good about it. Thanks for sharing all this. Unfortunately.
We are going to the end of this conversation, due to the time. But I have one last question that normally I ask for every guest is about 3, technically, Leadership wisdom Sao Paulo. Do you have some kind of a message of wisdom that you want to share or pass along to the audience? Here? They're few three reasons for a leader, empathy, put yourself on everybody's shoes.
And now it's a hard thing because we cannot give in the context of try to understand where people come from, with open, heart be very empathetic to understand people the cycle to be openness. The moment you want to be empathy. You have to be very open to everything. Be very open mind. For the difference that we have. You cannot find two people. Like, so we need to be very open in order to have that empathy
level of connection with people. And then the third would say servant the world has changed and if you want to be a leader, you want to figure out how to be a servant leader empathy, openness and servant. Because the other stuff leadership. You have a lot of books and things that you progress have covered for like a tea, openness and serve active for me. Those are the three skills that you need to really work on. Want to be a leader for today because we are ready in the future.
Why has changed drastically. Thanks for the beautiful wisdom message. I think I agree with that empathy. Openness and seven leadership will be like a very rare critical skills for leaders in the future. So thanks again, follow for your time. If people want to connect with you or find out more about you. Where can they find you? My website? I blog, very often like cover all your dot orgy or all dot org, or if you want to respect the stuff for with respect to.com., You find me.
Mike. Look for active on the blog's the books to your liquid in but go to the website you find me. Thanks Paulo. I hope that people listen to this episode and they will try some of these things like lean Inception and fund. Retrospectives. Thanks again for awesome. Thank you so much. Cheers. Thank you for listening to this episode and for staying right till the end.
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