This project was so "politically" hot it glowed in the dark. It had been failing for months, bleeding money, and making no progress. It landed in the hands of Promethean and they gave it to me to sort out. It's a long story, and worth a listen. There are a number of important lessons we can learn from it.
Here's the narrative:The idea was to deliver educational material through the lens of popular culture. Our MVP included a Star Trek based educational experience done in cooperation with CBS and the Smithsonian Institution.
Situation: A funded online learning initiative (MOOC) failed to make meaningful progress for several months. Partner contractual relationships were strained. Promethean was under board pressure to fix the problem.
Resolution: I started by confirming that the project made business sense. This involved both market and customer research as well as business modeling. All of that had to be done quickly. After confirming that a prima facia case existed it was time to organize and deliver.
I replaced most of the original team. To remain within the budget we hired a young, diverse, but generally inexperienced team. What agile stories/epics we had required a lot of rework. To inform our MVP, we interviewed potential customers, experts, and reviewed existing MOOC best practices. We combined countless perspectives and arrived at a workable vision. By the time we were done with this first part, we had re-imagined the entire experience. All epics/stories were rewritten, expanded, and prioritized into appropriate phases. The UI was scrapped and redesigned. The development team's priorities were aligned and we proceeded iteratively to successfully ship the product.
Outcomes: We shipped the product within our planned execution window and within two-percent of the original budget. We coordinated go-to-market with CBS and the Smithsonian Institution. We managed to reduce our anticipated acquisition costs sooner than expected (12-weeks ahead of schedule -- we assumed our costs would drop as we optimized our digital spend across channels and came to understand what was working and what was not). Conversion improved at the same time surpassing expectations by more than 25 percent. Customers loved it. Our social media properties rocked.
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