Escaping the Build Trap

Chapter 17. Problem Exploration

Christa was leading her team through the Product Kata to kick off their work on exploring the option.

“What is our option’s goal?” she asked Matt and Rich.

“Increase the rate of published courses to 50% and increase the number of second courses created by teachers to 30%,” they responded.

“Where are we now?”

“We’re still at the beginning: the publish rate of those courses that started is only 25%. Pretty dismal. The number of second courses is at just 10%. We’re doing super well,” he snarked. They were all a bit shocked when the data came in, and the feeling was still lingering.

“What is the obstacle standing in our way that we want to tackle?”

“We don’t understand enough about the problems the teachers are facing when creating courses.”

“What is one step we can take to better understand this?”

“User research,” said Matt. “I will line up 20 of our teachers for one-hour sessions and watch them create courses. In two weeks, I should have enough for us to identify the key pain points. Can you help me with the interviewing, Christa?”

“Of course, let’s divide and conquer. Rich, can you sit in on a few so we can all be on the same page?”

“Sure, I can come to about half of them this week. I’ll clear my schedule.”

There was so much angst in those sessions, but it was well warranted. The team video chatted with most of the users and had them screen share. They had a few teachers who hadn’t launched their courses yet, and they were able to show them where ...