Agile, Design Thinking, Lean Startup?-?Which is the best?method?

In a previous post, I wrote about the Mongol’s conquest over the Jin Dynasty’s army, and how their ability to stay agile and swift was their competitive advantage. As I was doing research, I came across a number of methodologies besides Agile, which made me wonder, which method is best when starting your startup?

Design Thinking

Design thinking is a process by which we strive to understand the user’s pain, in order to create new strategies and solutions. You can think of it more as “Painstorming,” as opposed to traditional “Brainstorming.” It is a method best used to understand a problem or identify early adopters.

There are various methods of design thinking, but they usually follow the double-diamond flow. Simply put, the first diamond starts by gathering lots of insights through talking to your target market, then clusters these insights and identifies key pain-points, problems, or jobs to be done. The second diamond ideates lots of potential solutions, then prototypes and tests the most promising ideas. I should point out that Design Thinking is mainly focused on qualitative and not quantitative insights. It thus lacks objective, metric-driven research on users’ true preferences.

Which is where The Lean Startup method comes in!

Lean Startup

The Lean Startup methodology was born in Silicon Valley in the ’90s, but the use of the word “lean” has its roots in Toyota’s lean production system. Toyota’s lean manufacturing system was used to build things efficiently, yet it lacked the element of what to build. Lean Startup considers everything to be a hypothesis or assumption until validated, so even understanding the customer, as Design Thinking attempts to do, would be considered an assumption.

The method talked about in Eric Ries’ famous book The Lean Startup focuses on 5 key principles (below), the most significant being the Build-Measure-Learn cycle loop. In Ries’ words: “The Lean Startup provides a scientific approach to creating and managing startups and gets a desired product to customers’ hands faster. 

The Lean Startup method teaches you how to drive a startup — how to steer, when to turn, and when to persevere — and grow a business with maximum acceleration.”

The Lean Startup approaches the problem of delivering a product the customer wants through validated learning (diagram below). Assumptions are evaluated through experimentation (build), testing (measure), and learning, to determine if the hypothesis is correct.

Lean uses qualitative insights early on, but later demands supporting quantitative data to measure effectiveness.

Agile

In software development, the Agile methodology focuses on eliminating waste and optimizing for the whole. It favors an incremental, iterative approach over in-depth planning at the beginning of the project. Traditional models are based on a timeline approach (Waterfall Method), where development happens sequentially and the final product isn’t revealed until the very last step (see diagram below for comparison). This leads to a long development process which leaves little room for flexibility. By the time an application is finished, it’s highly likely that the project’s original objectives have changed.

Agile methodology does not focus on the specific details of the product upfront since there are too many assumptions and too much uncertainty. Instead, Agile focuses on build-measure-learn methodology and validates assumptions while creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in Lean Startup parlance.The Agile methodology is open to change (hence the name “Agile”), and it is ideal for developing products and features super quickly.

The problem with Agile development is the risk of delivering a product that customers don’t want or need.

So to recap

• Design Thinking refers to creative strategies designers use during the process of identifying problems and thus, designing solutions.
• The Lean Startup is used to turn these proposed solutions into business models, underpinned by assumptions that are rapidly tested with actual customers to separate truth from fiction.
• Agile is characterised by frequent and incremental delivery of product, and ongoing reassessment and adaptation of plans.

Applying all this to skincare, and specifically my startup: Qyral

During the early stages at Qyral, I employed, or desperately tried, all of these methodologies when I was developing my own startup.

Using the principles of Design Thinking, I considered what pain point I was trying to solve. I knew I wanted to be in the anti-aging space, however, I needed to find out what my potential consumers wanted. So I set up a survey through Typeform and sent it out across multiple social media channels. Below is one of the surveys I sent out to determine pain points.

In combination with the surveys, I sent out as many Calendly invites as possible to interview potential customers — and even non-customers. I asked very simple questions to learn what people cared about most when it came to their anti-aging skincare.

Through my research I discovered what consumers wanted were effective ingredients, on par with what was offered in a dermatologist’s office.

Depending on your specific skin type and/or conditions, dermatologists typically prescribe either a topical retinoid and/or a series of acid peels. Some go as far as doing laser peels. In all of these cases, promoting cellular turnover is the key.

The problem with over-the-counter anti-aging products is that they are either watered-down versions of the prescription retinoid (which means a longer duration of time before they work) or an AHA/BHA that is not for your specific skin, or too strong or weak (e.g. glycolic acid cannot penetrate oily skin as well as salicylic acid). My solution was to personalize an effective serum that would promote cellular turnover, made specifically for the individual’s specific skin type.

In conjunction with promoting cellular turnover, you also need to assist the skin with repair and healing. Skin is made up of collagen, and collagen repair takes place from the inside as much as from the outside, so a collagen-rich supplement incorporating other skin repair elements was required, along with a peptide-rich moisturizer.

My Design Thinking Hypothesis

My hypothesis was that people want an effective anti-aging regimen that they can set on autopilot, and which will adjust to their lifestyle.

Now that I had identified my customer and their pain-point, I had to test my hypothesis!

I did this using the principles of The Lean Startups. I began by sending out the proposed regimen to respondents and receiving their feedback. Contradicting my initial assumption, the majority of users who responded were not baby boomers, but between the ages of 27–40. I followed up by putting out an initial MVP: a website that described our service to check whether people would even consider using the products. To my surprise, we had over 100 sign ups in less than a month! Bingo!

Now that I knew there was demand for my product and service, I set out to build the product using Agile methodology. Right now we’re still in this phase, however the Agile methodology helps create a feedback loop to personalize the product customers want.

The Lesson Learned: Combine all 3!

According to Forbes, 90 percent of startups fail because they produce products nobody wants. Combining these methodologies drastically reduces this risk.

All three methodologies take the final user into account through direct feedback. This feedback loop makes sure that no product is created without a purpose. Combining these three approaches allows for the versatility a startup needs in exploring a problem, building the right solution, and building it right!

For anyone interested my ongoing journey, please join me at www.qyral.com

Any and all feedback is always welcome at [email protected]