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: joe@cloudhealthtech.comBlog: 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