Archive for the ‘Lean Startups’ Category
I’m not a good killer. I love all my children.
In response to my post about how “Build-Measure-Learn is a waste…if you don’t Loop”, Olivia Zinn and I exchanged these messages:
Olivia: One thing I’d add to your post might be that you have to go into iterative efforts fully open to the fact that the “Loop” step might mean you took at wrong turn and need to stop and/or kill what you’ve done. Otherwise, you wind up with Winchester Mystery House product and resources spent supporting worthless crap. And killing something off is suuuuuuper hard to do, from what I’ve seen. But it’s part of that whole “committing to the Loop”…that’s the toughest part.
Me: I’m not a good killer. I love all my children.
Build-Measure-Learn is a Waste…
…if you don’t “loop”. People…you are killing me! There’s a reason it’s called the “Build-Measure-Learn Loop” and the most important word in that phrase is the “loop”!
Okay, take a deep breath…let me Take a Step Back™…because I started with the conclusion.
All the rage these days is talking about iterative development and emergent design. If you’re in the business, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re not, a bit of background:
Lean Startups, Demystified
Today, I gave a presentation at the ALM Summit at Microsoft called Lean Startups, Demystified. The slides are below.
After the presentation, I was speaking with an audience member and realized that I could summarize the whole notion of Lean Startups in just a few words:
In the 2000′s we spent our time figuring out how to build better software with Agile, and now we’re trying to figure out how to build software that people actually want with Lean Startup principles.
The Lean Startup: Building Something People Want
I have the pleasure of giving a presentation on Lean Startups at CodeDay MEGA, a hack-a-thon for kids by StudentRND, and the slides for that presentation are below.
Are Lean Startups as Old as Time Itself?
I’m reading a book about the building of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860′s. It turns out they were practicing lean all the way back then!
The book states that one reason US railroads took off so fast was because railroad builders were willing to build rough roads to prove out the profitability of a route, then after the route was making money invest the profits into regrading the road to a higher quality*:
Something else distinguished the American railway from its English parent. In America it was common practice to get the road open for traffic in the cheapest manner possible, and in the least time possible. The attitude was, It can be fixed up and improved later, and paid for with the earnings.
Even Buddha Valued Measuring Progress
I didn’t say, “even Buddha valued measuring progress“, my friend Justin did. He was referring to this:
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Customer Development and Lean Startup Diagrams
Click here for more on Lean Startups.
Commentary, no it’s Noise
The other day I wrote that what’s most important for a successful startup is:
…finding a product-market fit…. Everything else is just commentary.
and I stand by the first portion of that statement.
Language and Platform Has Virtually Nothing to Do With Success
Recently, I was part of a planning session for a conference on startups. One of the topics being discussed was:
Should we have a session on choice of platform or language? Which is best for a startup? For example, comparing Ruby to C# or Ruby on Rails to ASP.NET.
There are differences in platforms, I’m not going to deny that, but I don’t really think those differences have any meaningful difference in the success of a startup. (Or, I suppose I should be more specific: in the success of a web-based startup.)
What is a Lean Startup?
I’ve been talking a lot about Lean Startups, and there’s a lot of confusion about exactly, “What is a Lean Startup?”
Most people seem to think that is a startup that applies Lean Manufacturing principles to software development. That is part of it, but not the whole picture.
Lean Startup refers to a set of product development methodologies that
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