TopSol-Playbook: Lean/Agile Story Telling
Story telling, from A to Z, for product people and entrepreneur mindset
What the TopSol Playbook is:
- Technique to tell stories easily, using common good practices
More:
- It is a basic set of recipes, that is quite easy to read and understand, but difficult to master
- Fit for a product/feature development, not to be a succesful Hollywood screenwriter, or awarded novelist
- Usable from early stage to delivery: empathy, problem discovery, ideation, specs, development, test, deployment, communciation, sales, advertising, explainer videos, documentation
- Keep everyone in sync and aligned across different teams, remove some of the natural friction
- People will understand the "why", the goal, the guiding light
- Inspired by Lean Canvas, Monomyth, and The Golden Circle
- Roots in Agile, Lean Startup, Design Thinking, UX research
- Very simple and humble, voluntarily limited by design, using the systemic approach
Overview of the playbook
- Tell a story, using the base ingredients.
- If you want/need to detail, use the options.
- Try, learn, get feedback, remix, change, and adapt to your audience, always & continuously!
- If you reduce your story to the bare minimum, just a few words, you might land on your Unique Value Proposition (UVP).
- If you want to seriously learn strong story telling techniques, read the right litterature.
- This story telling technique differentiates: it is lean and agile, not generic, more dedicated to businesses
| Core | Options | More options |
|---|---|---|
| Target | ||
| Empathy | ||
| Problem | ||
| Consequence | ||
| Solution | ||
| Benefits | ||
Q&A, FAQ
What is "TopSol Playbook"?
"TopSol Playbook" is a set of recipes, templates and good practices, to help you shape your story telling. It is a guidance aimed at product people, like product owners, scrum masters, agile coaches, marketing people, sales people, even founders and C-levels CxO.
Story telling, you say? What else?
The "TopSol Playbook" may help you tell stories, but also may help you shape your {unique|key} value proposition.
How is it used? From A to Z?
It can be used to:
- describe a User Story or Epic, within an Agile team, using Scrum or Kanban, allows to project and better picture the expected outcome
- in a customer interview, test a solution, or a {unique|key} value proposition, validate or invalidate, persist or pivot, useful for Lean Startup and Design Thinking approaches
- sell a solution, product, or feature
TopSol Playbook helps you synchronise and align all the people involed in the User Story factory/pipeline.
What does "TopSol Playbook" stand for?
- Playbook, because I didn't want another "framework" ;-) and to underline it is not an advanced story telling technique
- TopSol, because To-P-Sol:
- To: Target, the people and personas you are targetting with your product or service
- P: Problem, the problem they face and suffer from, that is worth fixing
- Sol: Solution, the solution that you bring to your targets
Where does it come from?
Standing on shoulders of giants who stand on shoulders of giants, "TopSol Playbook" has its roots in:
- the Lean Canvas approach by Ash Maurya, I highly recommend this free online course: https://www.udemy.com/lean-canvas-course/ by Ash Maurya.
- Monomyth or "Hero's journey": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero's_journey
- "Why How What" by Simon Sinek: https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action
What can I do to help?
- Star this repository
- Share this in your networks
- Ask questions in the issues
- Suggest modifications
- Submit a patch
- Share your knowledge and experience
Can I use, share, and modify the TopSol Playbook?
The TopSol Playbook is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).
You are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.