Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. My belief is that these lean startups will achieve dramatically lower development costs, faster time to market, and higher quality products in the years to come. July 15, 2009 11:18 PM markmontgomery said.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup 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. They were deploying to production with every commit before they had an automated build server or extensive automated test coverage in place.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. Nothing made any difference.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

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. I got my start programming on an old IBM XT; it was thanks to MUDs that I first discovered the internet. So much for timing.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown, and the key to success is building an integrated team that includes product development in the feedback loop with customers. If you can build cars with it, Im pretty sure you can use it to add agility and flexibility to any product development process.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

If you havent seen it, Pascals recent presentation on continuous deployment is a must-see; slides are here. It’s common, perhaps the norm, for startups to pivot like that—to discover that a product is catching on in unintended ways worth pursuing. kaChing has been very active in the Lean Startup movement.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

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

OCTOBER 11, 2010

We loved the product. Test users loved the product. I envisioned the product would be popular with 8 to 12 year old boys. I already knew how the product would be used. We now knew what kids liked and we knew the product was technically feasible. By testing early and often, we were able to adjust the product.

Continuous Deployment 164

Continuous Deployment Technical Cofounder Cofounder San Francisco 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

When we build products, we use a methodology. We know some products succeed and others fail, but the reasons are complex and the unpredictable. a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit." The theory of Product/Market Fit is one key component of customer development, and I highly recommend Marcs essay on that topic.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If the CEO wants to completely change the product in order to serve a new customer segment, you need someone in the room who can digest the needs of the new (proposed) business, and lay out the costs of each possible approach. Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

In my experience, the majority of changes we made to products have no effect at all on customer behavior. This kind of result is typical when you ship a redesign of some part of your product. Without split-testing, your product tends to get prettier over time. First of all, why split-test? One last note on reporting.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

The foundation of TPS ( Toyota Production System ) is that people need to be (and feel) productive and society needs people to produce value. We are all engaged in creating valuable (we hope) services for society in some form or other and simultaneously meeting our own need to feel significant and productive.

Lean 140

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 140

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 13, 2008 SEM on five dollars a day How do you build a new product with constant customer feedback while simultaneously staying under the radar? In a mature company with a mature product, the goal is to pay for lots of people to come to your website. SEM is a simple idea. chatted once?

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, and more ► January (6) Lo, my 18891 subscribers, who are you?

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Labels: agile , continuous deployment 1 comments: timothyfitz said. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. and more ► January (6) Lo, my 18891 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

When I was a kid, the way I logged onto the internet for the first time (to play MUDs, naturally) was through an open dial-up console at San Diego State University. No logins, no codes, just raw uncensored internet access. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Expo (and a call for he.

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

This new volume also tackles examples from the Internet and wireless startups of today, both B2B and B2C. The results of the Customer Development process may indicate that the assumptions about your product, your customers and your market are all wrong. In fact, they probably will. In fact, they probably will.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

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. Five Whys has its origins in the Toyota Production System.

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

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. Unfortunately, customers hated that initial product.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Everyone was in the flow; the team was hyper-productive. In many cases, they did the impossible, building a new product faster, cheaper, and better than anyone could have predicted.

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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

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. We didnt think wed able to compete with that.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Maybe operations has changed the OS configuration in production in a way that is incompatible with some developers change. Thats counter-productive: the whole point of CI is to give each developer rapid feedback about the quality of their own work. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

Customers dont care if you have good metrics, only if you have a good product. And while its true that metrics sometimes can lead to a better product, in my experience just as often they had led to no insight whatsoever, like fancy reports that nobody reads or after-the-fact rationalizations (with graphs!) Well, lack of usage, really.

San Francisco 98

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

In most agile development systems, there is a notion of the "product backlog" a prioritized list of what software is most valuable to be developed next. But, over the years I’ve realized that the toughest problem - the one that matters most and was consistently the most challenging - was figuring out what the product backlog should be.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

In the very early days, the trick is to find anyone at all who can understand you when you are talking about your product. In our first year at IMVU, we thought we were building a 3D avatar chat product. As product people, we thought of competition in terms of features. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Five Why’s rarely works for general abstract problems like “our product is buggy&# or “our team moves too slow.&# 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 26, 2009

Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ▼ 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Articulate, inspirational.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, January 2, 2010 Towards a new entrepreneurship When I started writing about the lean startup , my aspiration was to do more than just share a handful of tips and tricks that work for consumer internet startups. The result is a profound democratization of the digital means of production.

San Francisco 122

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 122

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

They are launching their next book, a true field guide for entrepreneurs, called The Lean Entrepreneur: How to Create Products, Innovate with New Ventures, and Disrupt Markets. The book is still in production, so I haven't seen the whole thing yet. The idea with BetaBrand is we're going to try to put up products as rapidly as we can.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

The art team would often be involved in the specification phase of a new feature, since they were responsible for the look-and-feel of the product. When the art team would review the final product, they were inevitably outraged – it deviated from the spec in ways they considered major.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Now picture product prioritization meetings in such a company. Im talking about the adhoc crisis decisions, the periodic product prioritization meetings, and the failure post-mortems. Now picture product prioritization meetings in such a company. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2010

Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, and more ▼ January (6) Lo, my 18891 subscribers, who are you?

Lean 146

Lean San Francisco Wiki Startup 146

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them. Let’s look at some examples: In a traditional business, customers pay money for a physical artifact (a product) or a service.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

It is becoming easier and cheaper for companies to bring products to market, leveraging free and open source software , cloud computing, open social data (Facebook, OpenSocial ), and open distribution (AdWords, SEO). Combined with the technology trends above, it also enables rapid deployment strategies like just-in-time scalability.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102