Jeff Gothelf > Quotes

“Our goal is not to create a deliverable, it’s to change something in the world — to create an outcome.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“It’s often the case that teams working in agile processes do not actually go back to improve the user interface of the software. But, as the saying goes, “it’s not iterative if you only do it once.” Teams need to make a commitment to continuous improvement, and that means not simply refactoring code and addressing technical debt but also reworking and improving user interfaces. Teams must embrace the concept of UX debt and make a commitment to continuous improvement of the user experience.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“Each design is a proposed business solution — a hypothesis. Your goal is to validate the proposed solution as efficiently as possible by using customer feedback.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“Product requirements conversations must then be grounded in business outcomes: what are we trying to achieve by building this product? This rule holds true for design decisions as well. Success criteria must be redefined and roadmaps must be done away with. In their place, teams build backlogs of hypotheses they’d like to test and prioritize them based on risk, feasibility, and potential success.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“Generally, hypothesis statements use the format: We believe [this statement is true]. We will know we’re [right/wrong] when we see the following feedback from the market: [qualitative feedback] and/or [quantitative feedback] and/or [key performance indicator change].”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“And so, when I tell stories today about digital transformation and organizational agility and customer centricity, I use a vocabulary that is very consistent and very refined. It is one of the tools I have available to tell my story effectively. I talk about assumptions. I talk about hypotheses. I talk about outcomes as a measure of customer success. I talk about outcomes as a measurable change in customer behavior. I talk about outcomes over outputs, experimentation, continuous learning, and ship, sense, and respond. The more you tell your story, the more you can refine your language into your trademark or brand—what you’re most known for. For example, baseball great Yogi Berra was famous for his Yogi-isms—sayings like “You can observe a lot by watching” and “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” It’s not just a hook or catchphrase, it helps tell the story as well. For Lean Startup, a best-selling book on corporate innovation written by Eric Ries, the words were “build,” “measure,” “learn.” Jeff Patton, a colleague of mine, uses the phrase “the differences that make a difference.” And he talks about bets as a way of testing confidence levels. He’ll ask, “What will you bet me that your idea is good? Will you bet me lunch? A day’s pay? Your 401(k)?” These words are not only their vocabulary. They are their brand. That’s one of the benefits of storytelling and telling those stories continuously. As you refine your language, the people who are beginning to pay attention to you start adopting that language, and then that becomes your thing.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Forever Employable: How to Stop Looking for Work and Let Your Next Job Find You

“Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“Lean UX is a transparent process that not only reveals what designers do but encourages participation from everyone on the team.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams

“El software funcional es más importante que la documentación exhaustiva.”
― Jeff Gothelf, LEAN UX: Cómo aplicar los principios Lean a la mejora de la experiencia de usuario

“Our goal is not to create a deliverable or a feature: it’s to positively affect customer behavior or change in the world — to create an outcome.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams

“Lean UX advocates a team-based mentality. Rockstars, gurus, ninjas, and other elite experts of their craft break down team cohesion and eschew collaboration.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“Design only what you need. Deliver it quickly. Create enough customer contact to get meaningful feedback fast.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“as our software systems get more complex, it becomes harder to predict what people will do with them.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Sense and Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously

“excellence one at a time. See them in your mind’s eye: Marketing, Operations, Manufacturing, IT, Engineering, Design, and on and on in a tidy row of crisp, well-run silos.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams

“There’s a great Pixar video about telling stories. The video—“Pixar in a Box”—featured Pete Docter, director of the films Inside Out, Up, and Monsters, Inc. According to Docter, the power of story is that “it has an ability to connect with people on an emotional level.” He gives a bit of advice that I think is worth keeping in mind when you create a compelling story: Write what you know. Says Docter, even though you may be writing a story about explosions or monsters or car chases, “put something into it that talks about your own life—how you feel…. Something from your own life will make that story come alive.” Every good story has three elements: Characters. In a work situation, that might be you, your teammates, your customers or clients, and your boss. Who is in the story? Get your audience to feel an emotional investment in the characters. Plot. This could be, for example, the process of digitally transforming your business. A good plot keeps your audience engaged, wondering what’s coming up next. Story arc. This is the movement of the story from beginning to middle to end. You’ve got a problem and, through much trial and tribulation, you find a solution and become the hero of your team. Every story you tell—even if you’re writing about a technical problem, or starting your own business, or whatever it might be—needs to have these three elements. If you do this right, then people will care about your story. They don’t care about features, they care about the benefits of your idea—how what you’re pitching makes them better, smarter, more successful, happier, more fulfilled, more respected, and so on. They want to feel like a hero. And if you can make your audience feel like heroes, they will be engaged in your story and deeply connect with it on an emotional level.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Forever Employable: How to Stop Looking for Work and Let Your Next Job Find You

“Ensuring that an idea is right before scaling it out mitigates the risk inherent in broad feature deployment.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“Teams that enjoy working together produce better work.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“El esfuerzo se convierte en un proyecto sin rumbo en donde se entrega un código superficial que no responde a las necesidades principales de los consumidores.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking: Lo que realmente necesitas conocer para construir productos digitales con equipos de alto rendimiento

“I very frequently get the question: “What’s going to change in the next 10 years?” And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: “What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?” And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two—because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.2 You don’t need to invent something new to be successful, you don’t need to change the world to make a difference. Think about the things that aren’t going to change—the things that people are going to need consistently time and time again.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Forever Employable: How to Stop Looking for Work and Let Your Next Job Find You

“Rockstars don’t share — neither their ideas nor the spotlight. Team cohesion breaks down when you add individuals with large egos who are determined to stand out and be stars. When collaboration breaks down, you lose the environment you need to create the shared understanding that allows you [to avoid repetition] to move forward effectively.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“Tech teams focused on increasing velocity. Product teams focused on reducing waste. Design teams wanted lengthy, up-front research and design phases to help discover what the teams should work on. Very quickly they found themselves pulling away from each other, as opposed to collaborating more effectively.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking: What you really need to know to build high-performing digital product teams

“Lean UX uses these foundations to break the stalemate between the speed of Agile and the need for design in the product-development lifecycle.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“Enthusiastic skepticism is not the enemy of boundless optimism,”
― Jeff Gothelf, Forever Employable: How to Stop Looking for Work and Let Your Next Job Find You

“How is it possible that our departmental silos are operating with agility, but our companies are hopelessly rigid and slow?”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

“And what happens at the end of this process? The designers proudly present”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams

“Our tech teams are learning Agile. Our product teams are learning Lean, and our design teams are learning Design Thinking. Which one is right?”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking: What you really need to know to build high-performing digital product teams

“Just as a stream flows around obstacles, cutting unpredictable paths along the way, so will a group of users find the easiest, fastest ways to achieve their goal.”
― Jeff Gothelf, Sense and Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously

“And what happens at the end of this process? The designers proudly present — and the business enthusiastically celebrates”
― Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams