Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

And as Kapor himself points out, the core ideas have even older origins: The Roman architecture critic Vitruvius advanced the notion that well-designed buildings were those which exhibited firmness, commodity, and delight. Customer Development is itself an example of SBCE. We owe a lot to this seminal document. Expo SF (May.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Switching these customers directly to continuous deployment sounds harder than it really is. A typical "new feature" release is, in my experience, about 80% changes to underlying APIs or architecture. Continuous deployment offers three significant advantages over large batch development systems. I just dont believe it.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Both sides start to think of their point of view in moralistic terms: “those guys don’t see the economic value of fast action, they only care about their precious architecture diagrams&# or “those guys are sloppy and have no professional pride.&# No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Open APIs and data-oriented architecture (aka "web 2.0"). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Product development leverage Validated learning about customers Built to learn Web 2.0 The much-promised era of component reuse in software is finally upon us.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It’s important to invest in good architecture so that your website will scale once customers arrive. If you make that investment, and then customers arrive, and the site stays up, most companies will reward the people who built the architecture and, thus, prevented the scaling problems.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

The six key attributes spell ABCDEF: Agility. When talking about their past experience, candidates with agility will know why they did what they did in a given situation. To probe for agility, you have to ask the candidate questions involving something that they know little about. At the time, I was a die-heard Java zealot.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 13, 2009 The Principles of Product Development Flow If youve ever wondered why agile or lean development techniques work, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen is the book for you. Expo SF (May.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Wed never heard of five whys, and we had plenty of "agile skeptics" on the team. It seems your cluster architecture is one of the key architectural constraints making continuous deployment possible. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

I know them right away - we can talk high-level architecture all the way down to the bits-and-bytes of his system. When the architecture needs modifying - why do we need a meeting? Building a good application architecture is not just coding. Its common to find a hacker at the heart of almost any successful technology company.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Part-Time VPE 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, January 4, 2009 Sharding for startups The most important aspect of a scalable web architecture is data partitioning. So far, this is just a summary of what all of us who have attempted to build web-scale architectures considers obvious. Customer data is normally partitioned according to customer id.

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Lets start with a distinction between shipping new software to the customer, and changing the customers experience. The idea is that often you can change the customers experience without shipping them new software at all. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Continuous Deployment 68

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Someone has managed to convince themselves that they have to do their big architecture change in one fell swoop. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? When Ive worked to get everyone to build in small batches, I would see this pattern in action. Expo SF (May.

Product Development 68

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I started my last company with 100% off-shore resources because I could never have completed Customer Development at a reasonable cost of money or regulatory burden had I employed US Citizens. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

DC 90

DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Even though some aspects of the product were eventually vindicated as good ones, the underlying architecture suffered from hard-to-change assumptions. Without conscious process design, product development teams turn lines of code written into momentum in a certain direction. Even a great architecture becomes inflexible.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

The engineering team has decided its reached a breaking point, and is taking several weeks to bring it up to modern standards, including unit tests, getting started with continuous integration , and a new MVC architecture. On the other, they already have a team fully engaged on making their product architecture better. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79