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Lean Meets Wicked Problems

Steve Blank

I just spent a month and a half at Imperial College London co-teaching a “Wicked” Entrepreneurship class. In this case Wicked doesn’t mean morally evil, but refers to really complex problems, ones with multiple moving parts, where the solution isn’t obvious. Co mpanies also face Wicked problems. Here’s what happened.

Lean 295
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Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot

Startup Lessons Learned

kaChing has been very active in the Lean Startup movement. With case studies like this, we aim to illustrate specific Lean Startup techniques through the stories of current practitioners. Andy Mathieson, a founder and managing member at Fairview Capital , was particularly supportive. The response was surprisingly positive.

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Thank you

Startup Lessons Learned

Expo Intensive rocked, the mainstream media has started writing about the Lean Startup, and - most of all - the movement continues to grow and evolve. I went to the conference thinking that I was well grounded in the basics of the Lean Startup approach and that attendance would hone the edges of that understanding.

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Paul Graham on fundraising

Startup Lessons Learned

Alas, they arent published in a dead-tree medium yet, so I cant say something like "they are the essential reference on my bookcase." Its to everyones advantage to let the world think the founders thought of everything. I say this as a founder: the contribution of founders is always overestimated. Even VCs do it.

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Embrace technical debt

Startup Lessons Learned

I hope to show why lean and agile techniques actually reduce the negative impacts of technical debt and increase our ability to take advantage of its positive effects. Yet other agile principles suggest the opposite, as in YAGNI and DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork. Reconciling these principles requires a little humility.

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Lessons Learned: The engineering manager's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

When I first encountered agile software techniques, in the form of extreme programming , I thought I had found the answer. I explained it to people this way: agile lets you make the trade-offs visible to whole company, so that they can make informed choices. Even worse, agile wasnt really helping me ship higher quality software.

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Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?

Startup Lessons Learned

So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? But I think in a lean startup, the development methodology is too important to be considered "just management."

CTO 168