Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Focus on the output metrics of that part of the product, and you make the problem a lot more clear. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. Whatever its purpose, try measuring it only at the level that you care about.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2010

The Lean Startup Wiki (hosted by long-time lean startup pbWorks) contains a number of resources, including links to case studies , meetups, tools , and people who have volunteered to help. Its a wiki, feel free to consume and enhance it. Its a wiki, feel free to consume and enhance it. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco.

Lean 146

Lean San Francisco Wiki Startup 146

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. 2008 09 06 Eric Ries Haas Columbia Customer Development Engineering View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

But first I think we need to save the product manager from that special form of torture only a waterfall product development team can create. Labels: product development 8comments: Vincent van Wylick said. Lean Startup Wiki - including a complete list of local meetups and meetup organizers.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. What good are these metrics if they dont help guide product or business decisions?

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Labels: product development Speed up or slow down?

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Own the development methodology - in a traditional product development setup, the VP Engineering or some other full-time manager would be responsible for making sure the engineers wrote adequate specs, interfaced well with QA, and also run the scheduling "trains" for releases. Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Luckily, I now have the benefit of a forthcoming book, The Principles of Product Development Flow. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 11comments: Peter Severin said. Lean Startup Wiki - including a complete list of local meetups and meetup organizers. Interesting post. Bring your questions.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. No vanity metrics should be looked at. No vanity metrics should be looked at.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Lean Startup Wiki - including a complete list of local meetups and meetup organizers. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Bring your questions.

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

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. He wrote it in 2000, and as far as I know has never updated it.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. For example, I’m a big believer in split-testing.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. And what of the product development team? Time-to-complete-a-sale is not a bad metric for validated learning at this stage.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Lean Startup Wiki - including a complete list of local meetups and meetup organizers. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Bring your questions.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Ever since that time, I have struggled to explain how the feedback loop in customer development should interface with the feedback loop in product development. Eric Ries Lean Startup Schematic View Of Agile Development And Customer Development View more presentations from Eric Ries.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

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. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Bring your questions.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

I used to think that investments in metrics were a form of waste. Customers dont care if you have good metrics, only if you have a good product. The only reason we learned the art of metrics-based decision making at IMVU was out of necessity. Labels: product development 4comments: Doug said. Thank you Eric.

San Francisco 98

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Lean Startup Wiki - including a complete list of local meetups and meetup organizers. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Bring your questions.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

We started with a simple wiki page with a few bullet points of things that new engineers had tripped over recently. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 15comments: Anonymoussaid. Lean Startup Wiki - including a complete list of local meetups and meetup organizers. Leave your thoughts in a comment.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Lean Startup Wiki - including a complete list of local meetups and meetup organizers. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Bring your questions.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Because five whys kept turning up a few key metrics that were hard to set static thresholds for, we even had a dynamic prediction algorithm that would make forecasts based on past data, and fire alerts if the metric ever went out of its normal bounds. Lean Startup Wiki - including a complete list of local meetups and meetup organizers.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. Good luck, engineering manager. It was painful for a lot of people.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Bring your questions.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Customer development is a parallel process to product development, which means that you dont have to give up on your dream. Our goal in product development is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers. Lean Startup Wiki - including a complete list of local meetups and meetup organizers.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Lean Startup Wiki - including a complete list of local meetups and meetup organizers.

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

This development philosophy created a culture around rapid prototyping of features, followed by testing them against large numbers of actual customers. It would be hard to argue against this product development strategy, in general. Lean Startup Wiki - including a complete list of local meetups and meetup organizers.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

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. Leverage product development with open source and third parties.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Leading up to a pivot, each cycle, despite our best efforts, the metrics werent good enough. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. It was painful.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Bring your questions.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. Still, a startup product development team is a service organization. Labels: hiring , product development 5comments: TedHoward said.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

dalelarson : "Metrics are people, too." leanstartup ericnsantos : #w2e #leanstartup Metrics should be Actionable, Accessible and Auditable. Metrics are a key questions startups face. Metrics are people too" is a reminder I constantly needed when I was a manager. ericries s talk on Lean Startups absolutely fantastic.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Also SJ's obsession with better taste (positively) contributes to the overall product development process. There are some good anecdotes about Chief Engineers in the Toyota Product Development Book. Lean Startup Wiki - including a complete list of local meetups and meetup organizers. Great post Eric.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 3, 2009

In order to give people the data they need to apply the strategy, we were very open with our company metrics, making all reports generally available and easy to run. When you think a certain feature will give a 50% boost to a given metric, and it only eeks out a 5% boost, you cant spin that as failure. March 9, 2009 8:35 AM Eric said.

Employee 146

Employee San Francisco Lean Software Review 146

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. I think Drucker said it best.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Bring your questions.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Eric, Any thoughts on how forum feedback fits into customer development and agile product development? Youve probably addressed this in the past, but I continue to be blown away by how fast Blizzard reacts to noise in their forums and rapidly makes fixes to the product. =) November 4, 2008 10:58 PM IMVU said.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102