Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, February 20, 2009 Work in small batches Software should be designed, written, and deployed in small batches. Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. This is easiest to see in deployment.

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San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 16, 2009 Continuous deployment with downloads One of my goals in writing posts about topics like continuous deployment is the hope that people will take those ideas and apply them to new situations - and then share what they learn with the rest of us.

Continuous Deployment 68

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Each specialist takes up his part of the spec (UI, middleware, backend) and cranks out code. So the product manager winds up actually having to use the software, by hand, updating the spec and helping create a new test plan. In exchange, the team agrees to show each piece of working code to the product manager for his approval.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 11, 2010

Most of the companies we invest in release software at least once a month. This way all of the activity is captured and can be reviewed afterwards. Not all of the hackathon projects need to be about code. Some release weekly, or even daily. After the hackathon is over, publicize what you’ve done to the world.

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Software Review Wiki Continuous Deployment Agile 138

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 30, 2008 Refactoring for TDD and interaction design In TDD , we follow a rhythm of “test-code-refactor.&# Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Startup Lessons Learned season one : Every post from the blogs first year in print form.

Software Review 74

Software Review San Francisco Design Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

for Harvard Business Review) Over at Harvard Business Review, Ive been building up a series designed to introduce the Lean Startup methodology to a business-focused audience. Defective prototype code was as often thrown out (because customers didnt want it) as it was fixed (when customers did).

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. To his credit are Extreme Programming , jUnit, patterns, TDD , the list goes on. Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. To his credit are Extreme Programming , jUnit, patterns, TDD , the list goes on.

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Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

To illustrate this point, I want to excerpt a large part of a recent blog post by Owen Rogers, who organized my recent trip to Vancouver. I spent some time with his company before the conference and discussed ways to get started with continuous deployment , including my experience introducing it at IMVU.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, February 11, 2009 The free software hiring advantage This is one of those startup tips Im a little reluctant to share, because its been such a powerful source of competitive advantage in the companies Ive worked with. Especially for a startup, not taking maximum advantage of free software is crazy.

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

My experience is in Enterprise Software - where we are forced to chunk features into formal releases. While it is still possible - and recommended to experiment with customers in order to determine the minimum that they need, the exercise is bit more complicated due to the formality of the release process. Thanks Eric, great blog!

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

But there is more to technical debt than just the interest payments that come due. In particular, try these three things: Invest in technical debts that may never come due. Yet there is one silver lining when it does happen: we wind up throwing out working code , debt-riddled and elegantly designed alike.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 6, 2008 Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile I thought Id share an interesting post from someone with a decidedly anti-agile point of view. Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now A great checklist of techniques and tools for making your development more agile, written from a Rail perspective.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Your natural tendency when an investor says yes will be to relax and go back to writing code. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

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San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

When I want to know about some concurrency issues between services in his cluster, he doesnt blink an eye when I suggest we get the source code and take a look. Hes just as comfortable writing code as racking servers, debugging windows drivers, or devising new interview questions. He throws off volumes of code, and it works.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Part-Time VPE 94

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Code To make split-testing pervasive, it has to be incredibly easy. The only change you have to get used to as you start to code in this style, is to wrap your changes in a simple one-line condition. Now, it may be that these code examples have scared off our non-technical friends. October 4, 2008 10:33 AM Amitt Mahajan said.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

I was the junior guy on a project team; I was called in to do some technical due diligence for reasons that were obscure to me, because the team already had much more senior engineers assigned to it. And like feedback on a simple microphone sound system, this would occasionally boil over into screeching.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

See Paul Grahams Why Nerds are Unpopular to learn more) Take a look at this article on a programming Q&A site: How old are you, and how old were you when you started coding? We also learned that law is code , and that leadership was needed to build thriving communities in a digital age. Can I send you a review copy?

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Due to an interaction effect between your hardware, solar flares, and quantum flux, this virus will crash your computer and erase your hard drive sometime soon. In the past, we invested in brilliant architecture, code reuse, refactoring, modular design, etc. I have detected a secret virus in your CPU. The curse of prevention Beware!

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San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 3, 2009

At IMVU , these were quite common (after all, were shipping code 50 times a day). They are collected and reviewed after an appropriate interval (e.g. In response to Sean - Intel still runs a very formal process of setting expectations, evaluating employees and reviewing progress on a quarterly basis. love your openness at IMVU.

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Employee San Francisco Lean Software Review 146

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

For example, a site outage may seem like it was caused by a bad piece of code, but: why was that code written? The net effect of all this was to make new engineers incredibly productive right away – in most cases, we’d have them deliver code to production on their very first day.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 8, 2009 Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and whats changed since then) My recent article on technical debt and its positive uses generated a fair bit of controversy. The same might be said of good software. Here we have the beginnings of a theory of design for software.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Sean Murphy has an excellent and comprehensive roundup of resources about the conference: all of the slides, videos, summaries, notes and write-ups are listed on his blog here. You can read the rest of his posts on his blog : Introduction , Part 1 , Part 2.) And a special thanks is due to all of our presenters, panelists, and mentors.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2013

Or you could work with the writer to create a blog, see if it can attract a readership, and then test whether those readers will pre-order a book—which you can do before you’ve put ten seconds of effort into creating a print volume. Maybe you’ve got technical advice for getting the most out of A/B testing on software projects.

Lean 165

Lean Technical Review Startup Software Review 165

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

Over time, such teams either explode due to irreconcilable differences or dramatically slow down. As I found out to my dismay, this is a dangerous game: in many cases, you’re asking trained professionals to violate their own code of best practices, for the good of the company. Any excesses are likely to be moderated by others.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

When I wrote a review of Four Steps on this blog in November, 2008, I did my best to be candid and warn of a few shortcomings: And Steve is the first to admit that its a "turgid" read, without a great deal of narrative flow. Four Steps primarily centers its stories and case studies on B2B hardware and software startups.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Im also excited to share two long-form reviews from actual attendees. Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. More recently it's skewed to software & web. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Articulate, inspirational.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

I believe it is a full, company-wide turn through the OODA loop (for a software business, see especially Ideas-Code-Learn ). You need a process for systematically reviewing your costs and eliminating those that slow you down. This post has been removed by a blog administrator. What counts as an iteration?

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

My blog has over 14000 subscribers, for example. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. For example, the best book reviewers only review books published by the best publishers, which only accept manuscripts from the best agents. Is that a lot? Is that good?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

All I see is a name, an icon, a price, the developers name, and a review star-rating. The reviews are all over the map. But even clicking through to see a screenshot and some reviews is incredibly time consuming, given the hundreds of apps in most categories. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

For a consumer internet company in particular, this is often due to a lack of design thinking. In an entrepreneurial situation, this is hard, because artifacts that we are creating (products, code, marketing campaigns, even revenue) are of secondary importance. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

crowdSPRING Blog

DECEMBER 8, 2011

Design for Continuous Deployment – [link]. Legal Contracts for Software Developers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template tco use today) – [link]. A good culture avoids these dangers: Eight Dangers of Collaboration – [link]. Don’t Be A Free User – [link]. Cheap Willl Be Smart.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Media 94

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, May 14, 2009 The Lean Startup Workshop - now an OReilly Master Class My rate of posting has been much lower lately, and this is mostly due to preparations for the upcoming Lean Startup Workshop on May 29. Would you be willing to link to the Master Class info page from your blog? It was a disaster.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Thanks to those of you who were willing to fill out the survey, I learned my net promoter score (about 25) as well as some clear other segmentation insights: about 80% of you are founders of or work at a startup, you read many of the same other blogs, and many of you would like to engage with Lessons Learned in formats and venues beyond this blog.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

usersknow.blogspot.com

APRIL 30, 2010

If you have not asked the above questions about the feature you’re about to release, then you should stop reading this blog post and answer them right now. My code base can be changed or refactored to support major changes to the feature. Use the code “LAURAK&# for 20% off your ticket price! them ahead of time.

Software Review 40

Software Review Agile San Francisco Metrics 40

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2008

The credit is due to much smarter people than me, and to the incredible power of necessity, that mother of invention. You may have to staff up a large customer service department to review and approve all of the items. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Heres what I mean. And what do you do with the rest?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

Since then, PHP (as part of the LAMP stack ) has really been the dominant development platform, at least in the free software and startup worlds. When we started IMVU in 2004, we could rely on a staggering amount of open source software that jumpstarted our initial product offering. Every change required a server restart.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166