Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. I have personally sold many copies of his book, and continue to recommend it as one of the most important books a startup founder can read.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Steve Blank , January 25, 2010 10 Tips for Adding Game Mechanics to a Non-Gaming Service - ReadWriteStart , September 21, 2010 Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own. - First Principles.

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. I met one recently that is working on a really innovative product, and the stories I heard from their development team made me want to cringe.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

For the last 75 years products (both durable goods and software) were built via Waterfall development. In the last few years Agile and “Continuous Deployment” has replaced Waterfall and transformed how companies big and small build products. The Old Days – Waterfall Product Development.

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Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 332

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

You refer to an anonymous Valley-based MMORPG that consumed years and tens of millions in development, but got little commercial traction. 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

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

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. Moreover, approaching the problem from the direction that I had intuitively is a recipe for never reaching a point where continuous deployment is feasible.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

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. For more on continuous deployment, see Just-in-time Scalability.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. Your CTO might be a great architect, evangelist, interface designer or incredible debugger.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The goal is to have split-testing be a continuous part of our development process, so much so that it is considered a completely routine part of developing a new feature. The new design improved on the old one in several ways, but these improvements didnt translate all the way through the funnel.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Wanted to add one additional note from the perspective of someone who was intimately involved in developing this system. When Eric writes, "By the time we started doing continuous integration, we had tens of thousands of lines of code, all not under test coverage." Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

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 argument itself got me thinking a lot about design and its role in building products.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 11, 2010

I’ve become a big advocate of true Agile development (partly because of my experience with Rally Software – the leader in Agile software development environments) and – more recently – the notion of trying to get to continuous deployment which has been popularized by Eric Ries. Some release weekly, or even daily.

Software Review 138

Software Review Wiki Continuous Deployment Agile 138

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 25, 2011

It may be hard to remember that there was a time when people in the agile software development community thought Lean Startup was incompatible with agile practices. He’s one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the past few decades, and has continued to support the startup ecosystem as an investor and mentor.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Silicon Valley Lean Agile 146

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2010

In 2003 we started developing a martial arts motion sensing toy, a full three years before the Nintendo Wii changed the world of motion sensing. I wondered if we could do the same for hardware development. I found the perfect person at the department of Industrial Design Engineering of the Delft University of Technology.

Continuous Deployment 164

Continuous Deployment Technical Cofounder Cofounder San Francisco 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Oops - there went several precious weeks of development effort down the drain. 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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

Starting on the evening of December 11 and running through December 13—for VIP pass holders only—we’re partnering with UP Global’s Startup Weekend to offer a two-day Lean Startup immersion program , specially designed to teach you how to put Lean Startup theory directly into practice. Thus we reduce the risk of deployments.

Continuous Deployment 162

Continuous Deployment Norway Lean Analytics 162

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? hey eric, love the blog.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

For those whove heard it, it contains a length discourse on the subject of agile software development and extreme programming, including its weaknesses when applied to startups. I had a background in lean manufacturing (book knowledge, anyway) and lean software development (hands on) before encountering Lean Startups.

Lean 140

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 140

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 16, 2013

We work in prototypically four-week iterations, with quality engineers and software developers working in close collaboration. During this period, the Palantir Gotham team grew from five developers to around 35. But we couldn''t have identified this without having clear metrics (that high bug count) to assess our development process.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Software Engineering Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

If you havent seen it, Pascals recent presentation on continuous deployment is a must-see; slides are here. If you havent seen it, Pascals recent presentation on continuous deployment is a must-see; slides are here. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Want to learn more about me?

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

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. This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Labels: product development Speed up or slow down?

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a key lean startup concept.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Integration risk is the term I use to describe the costs of having code sitting on some, but not all, developers machines. Maybe two different developers made changes to the same underlying subsystem, but in incompatible ways. Maybe two different developers made changes to the same underlying subsystem, but in incompatible ways.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes. Labels: agile , continuous deployment 1 comments: timothyfitz said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

It allows teams to diagnose sources of waste in their development process and continuously improve, reversing the usual trend of teams getting slower over time. These problems can be anything: development mistakes, site outages, marketing program failures, or even internal missed schedules. My experience is: usually not.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Even if men have an innate advantage at software development, the gap would have to be massive in order to explain why startup after startup has an all-male team. I have personally taught many “non-technical&# people to program – graphic designers, QA folks, even artists and animators.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

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.&# This basic pattern is useful in all aspects of product development. The same process works in Interaction Design. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Software Review 74

Software Review San Francisco Design Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing. There is much work that I need to do (the only developer so far) before we have something customers can use. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

And do your customer development. Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. And one last specific practice that came up at this session: feverishaaron : UI, design and programmers are all in the same department, all have the same title, and all are evaluated the same.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

But its not very open, and not very programmable, unless you have an expensive Mac and an approved developer license. Not only are there free compilers and development systems, but there are also a number of efforts to develop development systems and languages specifically aimed at teaching kids to program.

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

The artists on the team had called in the big guns, and VP-level folks were there to explain the importance of certain aspects of the visual design that threatened to be cut. They either had to hire a developer onto the art team itself (unthinkable) or learn those development skills themselves (which was, to be fair, really hard).

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

If all the engineers work on the same thing at the same time, and all the marketers do the same, and QA, and ops, all the way down the line, then each department develops its own team-based private reality. All very reasonable, well designed, well argued. All very reasonable, well designed, well argued.

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167