Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Refreshing to finally see lean and agile thinking emerge in product/business-floors and not only in technology. Critical also, as the lean company/start-up can not be lean by just using lean principles in IT and not in Product Development/Management - a common misinterpretation of the Toyota Production System.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on?

Technology 145

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 145

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Own the development methodology - in a traditional product development setup, the VP Engineering or some other full-time manager would be responsible for making sure the engineers wrote adequate specs, interfaced well with QA, and also run the scheduling "trains" for releases. Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, October 4, 2008 About the author ( Update January, 2010: This post originally dates from October, 2008 back when I first started writing this blog. Ken Yagen (@kenyagen) KenAtYagenDotCom January 3, 2010 1:38 PM Paramendra Bhagat said. My first time at your blog. You are a great blogger.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Check your assumptions, what went wrong?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. What is customer development?

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 Thoughts on scientific product development I enjoyed reading a post today from Laserlike (Mike Speiser), on Scientific product development. I agree with the less is more product development approach, but for a different reason. Now that is fun.

Product Development 68

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Market Risk vs. Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention.

Vertical 167

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I am convinced one of Joel Spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the Joel Test , a checklist of 12 essential practices that you could use to rate the effectiveness of a software product development team. May 30, 2010 1:34 AM Poker Workout said. Its incredibly hard to do.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

But first I think we need to save the product manager from that special form of torture only a waterfall product development team can create. Labels: product development 8comments: Vincent van Wylick said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 133

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Luckily, I now have the benefit of a forthcoming book, The Principles of Product Development Flow. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 11comments: Peter Severin said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Interesting post.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage. The biggest source of waste in new product development is building something that nobody wants. Leverage product development with open source and third parties.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Those rates gave us a map that told us a lot about our customers; insights that proved stable even when the company grew orders of magnitude bigger. Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 255

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 255

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

My two cents is that a business plan is the single place to collect your thinking about about your: business model, distribution channel, demand creation plan, financial assumptions, and customer and product development plan. If you’re text averse like i am, try to diagram these key items and then write-up the diagrams.

Business Plan 160

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 160

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, What is customer development? April 23, 2010 in San Francisco. [link] June 20, 2009 2:52 PM Anonymoussaid. Bring your questions.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, March 25, 2010 Speed up or slow down? This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Labels: product development Speed up or slow down? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Its inspired by the classic OODA Loop and is really just a simplified version of that concept, applied specifically to creating a software product development team. There are three stages: We start with ideas about what our product could be. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. It’s one of the subtle distinctions that at times gets lost in the process.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 146

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 4, 2010 Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Kent Beck will give the opening keynote at the Startup Lessons Learned conference on April 23. Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. Its not enough just to build a product with great features - you have to figure out if there is a market for it. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. This speeds up the Ideas-Code-Data feedback loop. Excellent ideas!

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, July 28, 2010 Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot (The following guest post is a new experiment for this blog. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 15comments: Anonymoussaid. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Leave your thoughts in a comment. I’ll do my best to help.)

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. I think Drucker said it best.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

I can appreciate the benefits of a fast develop-build-test cycle improving quality, improving team satisfaction and improving productivity, but automated deployment will take some getting used to. Glad you don't develop software for space shuttles. January 29, 2010 11:18 AM Eric said. >

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

March 26, 2010 8:42 AM ankur aggarwal said. Theoretically, i can visualize the Continuous Integration as RAD ( Rapid action development) along with iterative method, which we used to study in Software Engineering's Process model. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

0comments: Post a Comment Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Subscribe via email Blog Archive ► 2010 (48) ► October (3) Case Study: Rapid iteration with hardware The Lean Startup Bundle Stop lying on stage ► September (4) Good enough never is (or is it?) Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, May 31, 2010 Thank you The past month has been an incredible roller coaster: #sllconf was a trending topic (briefly topping Justin Bieber before the wifi in the hotel gave out), the Web 2.0 When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

January 14, 2010 12:43 AM wesley chun said. speaking of Python, over a decade ago, the creator of Python wrote an essay called Computer Programming for Everybody (CP4E) which turned into a DARPA grant describing how programming should be taught like reading, writing, and arithmetic: [link] January 14, 2010 1:25 AM drhowarddrfine said.

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem) Lean startups don’t optimize. Instead, we try to accelerate with respect to validated learning about customers. There are often counter-intuitive changes in customer behavior that depend on little details.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, June 2, 2010 The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business Review) I continue my series for Harvard Business Review with the Lean Startup technique called Five Whys. Five Whys has its origins in the Toyota Production System. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

blog comments powered by Disqus Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe via email Blog Archive ► 2010 (48) ► October (3) Case Study: Rapid iteration with hardware The Lean Startup Bundle Stop lying on stage ► September (4) Good enough never is (or is it?) Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

Lean 140

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, January 12, 2010 Amazing lean startup resources A year ago, there was no lean startup movement. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Bring your questions.

Lean 146

Lean San Francisco Wiki Startup 146