Agility Experienced. Success Realized.
Joe KinsellaCTO & Founder
CloudHealth® Technologies
Agility [uh-jil-i-tee]- moving quickly and easily, intellectual acuity
About Me Founder & CTO of CloudHealth
Technologies Entrepreneur & technical executive Cloud computing enthusiast,
evangelist & blogger VPE at SilverBack & Sonian, Director
at Dell
Twitter: @joekinsellaEmail: [email protected]: www.hightechinthehub.com
Built large scale cloud public cloud infrastructure Passion for solving complex problems IT management software geek Member of “first Scrum team”
Agenda
Introductions Agility In Founding a Company Agility In Finding Product Market Fit Agility In Growing a Company
IT Infrastructure Management Cloud Management
CloudHealth Technologies BackgroundDeep Domain Expertise
$20 Million in Venture Capital Raised
450+ Customers
100+ Employees
Headquartered in Boston, MA Offices in San Francisco and London
Revenue Growth
Customer Growth
My Agile Heritage Launched software career on
“first Scrum team” Team formed at crossroads of
old and new worlds – Waterfall vs Agile
Member of “first standup” Jeff Sutherland (manager) went on to become Scrum
evangelist & co-signer of Agile Manifesto Early lessons:– Value of working directly with customers & working in cross-
functional teams– Never stop innovating
An Agile Approach ToFounding a Company
“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is
pure perseverance.”--Steve Jobs
Taking the Leap Starting company is highly irrational act Worked to manage all downside risks
until one day it no longer seemed risky Took non-traditional approach– Started with market instead of product– Started with experiments instead of
business plan– Talked to investors before anything in which
to invest– Formed team of advisors to complement
skills– Sought “founding secrets”
“When your army has crossed the border, you should burn your boats and bridges, in order to make it clear to everybody that you have no hankering after home.”
--Sun Tzu
Finding the Market Opportunity Stayed close to passion & expertise Ran series of experiments using Lean
Startup methodology Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop Process– Define critical hypotheses to test– Design experiment that efficiently tests
hypotheses– Rinse & repeat
Remain objective Early experiments: The Free Tool, The Ad
Campaign, The Poll, Me as a Service
“Startups that survive the first few tough years do not follow the traditional product-centric launch model espoused by product managers or the venture capital community.”
--Steve Blank
Building the MVP MVP came from series of MVFs Finding the Minimum Viable
Feature (MVF)– Identity minimum investment required
to deliver value for subset of customers– Deliver feature– Gather feedback / data– Rinse & repeat
Follow the customer & adapt vision Iterate in the presence of customers
Selling the MVP 1st customer came from Lean
experiment called The Sale Experiment designed for failure but
had unexpected success Key behind early success – Customer-driven development honed value proposition– Targeted “earlyvangelist” customer– Articulated vision for future product
Drove metrics-driven process to quantify effort If you’re not being rejected, you are not trying
An Agile Approach ToFinding Product Market Fit
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
--Henry Ford
Hiring the Early Team You can found a company alone,
but you need a team to build one No margin for error in early hires Good hiring maximizes chance to
achieve product market fit Hire only proven startup pros Early executives must be strong
individual contributors Don’t sacrifice culture for talent Don’t sacrifice right for fast Fail fast on bad hires
Searching for Product Market Fit Most startup failures result from inability to achieve
“product market fit” Product market fit = being able to reproduce the
sale of a product in a market with consistency Product market fit results from series of epiphanies
derived from executing in a market Often takes 3-5 epiphanies to achieve fit “string of
pearls” Epiphanies can include market, product,
distribution, business model, branding– E.g. Facebook = initial focus on college student (target market) +
student-focused features (product) + vertical college rollout (distribution) + advertising (business model)
Everyone Is a Product Manager Highly collaborative approach to
driving product allowed rapid attainment of product market fit
Product management is not a department – it’s a company
Drive continuous customer engagement
Become voice of customer, not its gatekeeper Continuously test assumptions Minimize distractions for engineering Drive internal feedback loop to learn from mistakes
ProductMarket Fit
An Agile Approach ToGrowing a Company
“We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
--Thomas Edison
Driving an Agile Culture Hire collaborators Make customer engagement your
internal currency Continuously innovate across all
functions Drive tight feedback loops Make work products visible Drive collaborative decision making Continuously test assumptions Build adaptability into processes Make series of small bets
Product Development at CloudHealth Seasonal releases with 5-10 major
themes (“epics”) Execute seasons in 6-7 two week
sprints Sprints include work for themes, enhancements, internal
improvements & bug fixes Continuously deploy software (daily) with feature flags Announce releases once a week Sprints start with sprint planning, end with retrospective Sprint planning includes two halves: – Business – review results of previous sprint, plan for next
sprint, enhancements & issues– Technical – review detailed backlog & plan sprint
Driving an Agile Product Strategy Value throughput / adaptability over
predictability Make series of small bets instead of
one big one, e.g.– CloudHealth partner channel & entering
the enterprise market Don’t let competitors distract you from customers &
prospects Adapt execution to need– Emerging – experimental mode where there exists unknowns– Tactical – solving for current known business need – Strategic – solving for future demand
Always execute in context of product vision
Managing Agile Product Releases Contents of weekly releases can
vary based on engineering status Cross-functional team decides on
Friday what is ready to ship Just in time approach to
documentation, help & training Monday afternoon release update
goes out to all users Leverage in-app notification as
secondary channel Agility has become our brand
Finding Outlets For Innovation Hackathons
– 24 hours of freeform hacking on ideas related to CloudHealth
– Self-organizing cross-functional teams– Concludes with presentations by each team to
company– Prizes awarded via Yankee Swap over dinner
CloudHealth University– Every 3 week classroom for learning about new
topics– Course topics crowd sourced– Instructors from across organization
Demo Days– Every sprint starts with Demo Day– Drink beer, eat pizza, socialize, show cool stuff
Final Lessons
“All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in
human DNA.”--Reid Hoffman
My Lessons from Founding CloudHealth It’s all about the customer Work with people for whom building products is a
passion, not a job Operate with openness & transparency Integrity matters Value people over process Vision is a compass, not a map The enemy is outside the gate Listen Fail fast Enjoy the ride