BSG was trusted to guide the adoption of a ‘fail fast’ approach in the client environment for the first time, with BSG providing customer experience design (CXD) and business analysis competencies to direct the design process and ensure the usability of the developed product, together with website development and testing competencies.

Utilising Running Lean thinking, BSG firstly guided the client in determining whether the application was a viable venture and, when this was proven, to test which features customers would see value in having access to. To determine this the team created a Lean canvas to define the problem context and the solution features, as well as the real metrics that would be used to prove viability.

Integral to the project was engagement with a broad sample of people to ascertain how confident they were in knowing what their assets were, the warrantee periods of assets and whether their assets were adequately insured.

Quick, effective interviews, surveys and observations were conducted in the bank’s own environment and in neutral environments outside the bank, to provide validation of assumptions and decisions.

Based on these outcomes, the features of MVP1 (the first iteration of MVP) were determined. By assessing whether the solution features of the MVP adequately addressed the problem, the BSG team could determine the appetite of the target market.  During this investigative phase the team conducted further customer interviews and observations, developing user profiles and personas for use during the subsequent development phase.

By following a build-measure-learn and rapid prototyping approach, the project team was able to test viability on an ongoing basis.  With that confidence in the concept, they could clearly illustrate look and feel and provide functional requirements to the developers, all of which ensured alignment to customer and business requirements.  Furthermore, by creating visibility of the user feedback and prototype to relevant stakeholders, BSG ensured all parties were kept informed and any product misconceptions and assumptions could be managed.

Lessons learnt during this implementation included validating that clients struggle to adopt a Lean and iterative approach to development and often revert to the customary and familiar Waterfall approach, so change management and reinforcement is critical. Further, when applying a Running Lean approach, especially when the end goal could mean developing applications for multiple platforms, only one platform must be selected for the MVP—with the Lean and CXD process applied to develop an application for only that platform. Only once that MVP has been tested and validated should scaling to other platforms commence.