10 New Methods: Product, Agile and Research

---

Scrum Ceremonies

Three methods that cover the daily, weekly, and end-of-sprint rhythms your team needs.

Sprint Planning

Sprint Planning is the event that kicks off each sprint. The whole Scrum team - product owner, developers, Scrum master - decides what the sprint will accomplish and which backlog items to pull in. The output is a sprint backlog with a clear sprint goal and a committed set of work.

When to use it:

• You're starting a new sprint and need alignment on what gets built
• Your team over-commits or under-commits consistently
• The product owner and developers disagree on priorities

Daily Standups

The Daily Standup is a 15-minute daily event where the team coordinates on the sprint goal. Each person shares what they did yesterday, what they'll do today, and what's blocking them. It's a coordination meeting, not a status report to management.

When to use it:

• Your team needs a regular sync point to catch blockers early
• Work is getting stuck without anyone noticing until the sprint review
• You want to replace long weekly meetings with short daily check-ins

Retrospectives

The Retrospective closes every sprint. The team examines how they worked together, identifies what went well and what didn't, and commits to one or two specific improvements for the next sprint. Classic formats include "Start, Stop, Continue" and "Mad, Sad, Glad."

When to use it:

• Your team repeats the same mistakes sprint after sprint
• You need a safe space for honest conversation about process
• Velocity is flat and you want to find out why

---

Understanding Your Customers

Customer Development

Customer Development is Steve Blank's methodology for validating who your customers are, what problems they have, and whether your solution addresses those problems. The core imperative - "get out of the building" - means testing every business assumption with real evidence before committing to build.

When to use it:

• You're building a new product and haven't talked to potential customers yet
• Your team has assumptions about customer needs but no evidence
• You've launched something and adoption is lower than expected

User Interviewing

User Interviewing is one-on-one research conversations with current or potential users. The goal isn't to ask what people want - it's to understand context, behaviours, frustrations, and motivations. A well-run interview reveals the "why" behind user behaviour that analytics can never capture.

When to use it:

• You need qualitative evidence to support or challenge a design direction
• Quantitative data tells you what users do but not why they do it
• You're entering a new market and need to understand the customer landscape

User Flows

A User Flow maps every step a user takes through your product to complete a specific task. It shows screens, decision points, alternative paths, and error states. Unlike wireframes (which show individual screens), user flows show how screens connect into a coherent experience.

When to use it:

• You're designing a new feature and need the whole team to see the end-to-end path
• Users are dropping off mid-task and you need to diagnose where
• You want QA to understand every scenario before they start testing

---

Prioritization

RICE Prioritization

RICE scores every idea using four factors: Reach (how many people it affects), Impact (how much it moves the needle), Confidence (how sure you are), and Effort (how much work it takes). Multiply Reach x Impact x Confidence, divide by Effort, and you get a single score that cuts through opinion-based debates.

When to use it:

• Your backlog is a battleground of competing opinions
• Stakeholders push pet projects without data to back them up
• You need a transparent, repeatable system for saying "not now" to ideas

Impact/Effort Prioritization

The Impact/Effort Matrix is a 2x2 grid that plots tasks by value delivered versus work required. Four quadrants emerge: Quick Wins (high impact, low effort), Major Projects (high impact, high effort), Fill-Ins (low impact, low effort), and Time Wasters (low impact, high effort). Quick Wins go first.

When to use it:

• You need to triage a long list of tasks in a single session
• Your team keeps working on the wrong things
• You want a visual way to explain prioritization decisions to stakeholders

---

Commercial Foundations

Kano Model

The Kano Model classifies features by their relationship to customer satisfaction. Basic Needs cause dissatisfaction when missing but go unnoticed when present. Performance Needs create linear satisfaction - more is better. Excitement features delight precisely because customers didn't expect them. A product can have hundreds of features and still fail if they're the wrong type.

When to use it:

• You're debating which features to include in a release
• Customers are satisfied but not delighted, and you can't figure out why
• You need a framework for differentiating your product beyond table-stakes features

Pricing Strategy

Pricing Strategy covers the six primary approaches: value-based, cost-plus, competitive, freemium, dynamic, and penetration pricing. McKinsey research shows that a 1% improvement in pricing yields an 8.7% improvement in operating profit on average. It's the highest-leverage commercial decision most teams never spend enough time on.

When to use it:

• You're launching a product and haven't validated willingness to pay
• Your pricing hasn't changed in two years and the market has shifted
• You're losing deals on price but aren't sure if the problem is the price or the positioning

---

What's Next

The Customer Development → User Interviewing → User Flows sequence works well if you're moving from "who is this for?" to "what should we build?" Start by validating the customer, then dig into their behaviour, then map the experience.

For prioritization, try running both RICE and the Impact/Effort Matrix on the same backlog. RICE gives you precision, the matrix gives you speed. Use whichever fits the conversation.

Got a method you'd like to see added? Let us know on the feedback page.