1. Developing a Volunteer Training Program Using Lean Product Methodology
My name is Dan Glynn. I have been the Recreation Supervisor for the City of Stoughton in Wisconsin for 8 years. This presentation will tell the story of how I developed volunteer training using LEAN Product methodology.
Dan Glynn
Recreation Supervisor
City of Stoughton, WI

2. Stoughton, WI Service population of 20,000
Been offering PL enriched programs since January 2012
Train roughly 125 volunteer coaches annually
A little background on Stoughton. We are located in suburban Madison in southern Wisconsin. We provide municipal recreation for 20,000 people. We started offering physical literacy programming in January I train approximately 125 coaches a year.

3. Our Challenges Finding volunteers to coach
Attendance at coaching clinics
Coaches not knowing what physical literacy is
Coaches not buying into a physical literacy approach
As anyone who provides community recreation knows, volunteers are the backbone to offering quality, affordable programming. All of the challenges listed on the screen hindered our ability to offer quality physical literacy experiences. Which led me to creating a new volunteer training program that fit their needs.

4. Determine your target customer
Identify underserved customer needs
Define your value proposition
Specify your minimum viable product (MVP) feature set
Create your MVP prototype
Test your MVP with customers
In the winter of , I participated in a business accelerator where I learned about LEAN Product process. This is where I discovered how I was going to create a training program. There are six steps to the LEAN Product process.
LEAN Product Process

5. Step 1 - Determine Your Target Customer
Conduct Interviews
Develop Customer Persona
The first step in the LEAN Product Process is determining your target market. Our target was volunteer coaches. I sent an out to people who have volunteered with us for the past five years and asked if they would be interested in a quick in-person interview. Getting out of the building and getting to know your customers is the key to LEAN Product development.
‘Get Out of the Building’

6. Customer Personas Name Representative photograph
Quote that conveys what they most care about
Job title
Demographics
Needs/Goals
Relevant motivations and attitudes
Related tasks and behaviors
Frustration points with current solution
Level of expertise/knowledge (in the relevant domain)
Product usage context/environment (where they use the product)
These interviews let me build a customer persona of our volunteer coaches. The personas allow you to really get to know your customer.

7. Step 2 - Identifying Customer Needs
“As a volunteer coach, I want to learn how to teach the game I love, so that children that I coach will also love it.”
‘Get Out of the Building’
The second step in the process is identifying customer needs. A useful way to do this is to make a user story that conveys what they most want. You do this by again, getting out of the building and conducting interviews.

8. Volunteer Needs Less complicated activities
How to regress/progress activities to fit skill level
How to keep children engaged
Behavior management
Time efficient training
Easy to use activities in an easy to use format
Something they can take with them
After interviewing multiple coaches, these are the needs that kept on coming up.

9. Step 3 – Define Your Value Proposition
What is a value proposition?
The next step in the process is defining your value proposition. A value proposition is how you are going to address customer needs better than any alternative.

10. Volunteer Training Value Proposition
Provide volunteer coach training that is time efficient, user friendly, and easy to learn.

11. Step 4 – Specify Your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Feature Set
Develop more user stories Features & ROI
The next step in the process is specifying your minimum viable product feature set. You will need to develop more user stories to keep the benefits clear for each feature. You want to figure out what features give you the best ROI in terms of time and money.

12. Volunteer Needs & MVP Features
Need: Simple and time efficient training
Feature: Online videos that are accessible 24/7
Need: Easy to use activities in an easy to use format
Feature: Age specific activities laid out and that they can take with them to the program
Need: Parents not understanding what physical literacy is
Feature: Parent awareness
I deducted the needs into three separate categories. They needed simple and efficient training

13. Step 5 – Create Your Minimum Viable Product Prototype
Goal = Build a prototype that lets you test your hypothesis
The fifth step in the Lean Product Process is Creating Your Minimum Viable Product. The goal is to test your hypothesis to see if you are on the right track.

14. Volunteer Training Minimum Viable Product
Piecemeal MVP YouTube Printed Materials Google Forms
We ended up using a piecemeal MVP which creates a functioning demo of the product using existing tools. We did this to save money and make it efficient to build. We used these three formats. I did our normal coaches meeting, but recorded and posted the video to YouTube. Made our coaching handouts straight to the point for each activity. We provide our volunteers with laminated activity cards that they can take with them to the program. We now provide our coaches with parents letters that explain what physical literacy is and why we run programs the way we do. Finally, I used Google Forms to track usage.

15. Step 6 – Test Your MVP with Customers
Miniball Soccer
The final step in the Lean Product Process is testing your MVP. I tested it with volunteers for our Miniball Soccer program which is soccer for 5-6 year olds. We had 16 coaches and 15 filled out the assessment on Google Forms. Based on my observations, we had a much better fall season than we did the prior spring.

16. Conclusion
Can be done anywhere Get out of the building and don’t assume you know your customer
This is something that can be done anywhere, but it’s imperative to get out of the building and don’t assume that you know your volunteers. We are currently in the process of extrapolating our MVP and doing it across the board for all of our programs.
If you would like a sample of our training materials, please me and I will send them to you.