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. Do you fix bugs before writing code? Please leave feedback!)

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

If engineers want more time to spend making their old code more pretty, they are invited to do so on the weekends. The idea is that once we move to the new system (or coding standard, or API, or.) The current code is spaghetti, but the new code will be elegant. Its become "legacy code" and part of the problem.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

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

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. Expo SF (May.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, February 22, 2009 Please teach kids programming, Mr. President Of course, what I really mean is: let them teach themselves. 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?

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

It became harder and harder to separate how the software is built from how the software is structured. If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? If not, whos going to insist we switch to free and open source software?

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

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

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. I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. For software, the easiest batch to see is code.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Of all the tactics I have advocated as part of the lean startup , none has provoked as many extreme reactions as continuous deployment , a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. When a developer wants to check-in code, this is a very scary moment.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

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. But there is more to technical debt than just the interest payments that come due. The failure of the feature had nothing to do with the quality of the code.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

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. What will be covered in the full-day program? You can click here to learn more.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

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. Firmness: A program should not have any bugs that inhibit its function.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 5, 2010

We're "lean" but we're not stirring hearts. I'm as excited as everyone else about Lean principles gaining traction, and sure most companies are erring on the side of too little objective feedback rather than too much. Code Historian was my first product. It was always a high point in product reviews. Here's its story.

Software Review 226

Software Review Metrics Lean Algorithm 226

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 29, 2021

This will help those who lost work due to the pandemic. 7- Providing employee engagement software. My #1 goal for 2022 is to help my company become the number one provider of employee engagement software. It's important to keep business agile. I also look forward to working with bloggers to spread the word. organization.

Entrepreneur 137

Entrepreneur Social Media Employee Los Angeles 137

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Your natural tendency when an investor says yes will be to relax and go back to writing code. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

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.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 23, 2020

Due to this, I’ve opted to take four-day workweeks and/or during flexible hours. Recent studies have shown that due to the ongoing pandemic, online presence has risen exponentially in all sectors. 9- Focusing on lean operations. The first event has already started – Agile and Management 3.0 18- Two adjustments.

Entrepreneur 125

Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review Employee 125

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

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 15, 2008 The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time Split-testing is a core lean startup discipline, and its one of those rare topics that comes up just as often in a technical context as in a business-oriented one when Im talking to startups. October 4, 2008 10:33 AM Amitt Mahajan said.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

And, as one entrepreneur put it to me, "we understood that a big part of our responsibility in the program was to make sure the mentors have a good experience, by taking their advice to heart and giving them a feeling of being part of our evolution as a company." Im also excited to share two long-form reviews from actual attendees.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

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

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 11, 2012

Lean Marketing: Delivering Customer Service via Social Media – [link]. Better Agile Than Smart – [link]. Andreessen Horowitz Confirms Its Scout Program, Calls Out Lazy Angels Who Hate Competition – [link]. Better Agile Than Smart – [link]. Sequoia Confirms Existence of “Stealth” Scout Program.

Social Media 92

Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

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. And how could they possibly review a blog? Is that a lot? Is that good?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 27, 2016

Here are some of their approaches… Keep it Lean. What I’ve found works best is reviewing the roadmap on a weekly basis, tracking progress and making tweaks where necessary. But by keeping your process lean and reviewing your roadmap regularly, you at least open up the possibility of seeing these wins faster.

Framework 48

Framework Warrant Conversion Agile 48

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. We’ve made some cool additions to our pre-conference webcast lineup , including two conversations with founding figures for methods that underlie Lean Startup. I interrupted them and gave them “the spiel: about TDD. Eventually they just turned and walked away.

Product Development 167

Product Development Software Review Technical Review Developer 167

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 30, 2019

But, there’s plenty that you can do… if you embrace lean marketing principles. Lean marketing is a philosophy that emphasizes executing campaigns quickly, getting feedback from your audience, analyzing the results, and optimizing the campaign – all in rapid succession. National television campaigns are definitely out.

Lean 91

Lean Small Business Software Review Marketing 91

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

It connects to the internet to automatically download the necessary codes. Heres a representative view from an actual Amazon customer review : We all know how to operate our own entertainment center, but what happens when you have to explain it to your babysitter, mother-in-law, or your wife? They want to do activities. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

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

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

A new bit of code contained an infinite loop! why did that code get written? Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. Most engineers would ship code to production on their first day.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Our code pushes take another six minutes. Since these two steps are pipelined that means at peak we’re pushing a new revision of the code to the website every nine minutes. On average we deploy new code fifty times a day. Code reviews and pairing Great practices. Throwing out a lot of code.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

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. It happens whenever youre writing code on your own machine, or you have a team working on a branch. It also happens whenever you have code that is checked-in, but not yet deployed anywhere.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, July 2, 2009 How to conduct a Five Whys root cause analysis In the lean startup workshops , we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the technique of Five Whys. My intention is to describe a full working process, similar to what I’ve seen at IMVU and other lean startups.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

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 Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 3, 2009 Minimum Viable Product: a guide One of the most important lean startup techniques is called the minimum viable product. I was delighted to be asked to give a brief talk about the MVP at the inaugural meetup of the lean startup circle here in San Francisco. Thanks Eric.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 25, 2020

And I think how you think about that, whether you're a restaurant owner that didn't invest in curbside pickup, what can you do to, I'll call it, hack it or in an agile mindset, how do you think about bringing a way to be able to do curbside and do that well, and not just rely on the delivery folks to be able to support you? Let's go."

Technical Review 148

Technical Review Balance Sheet Texas Austin 148

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

Getting features and fixes into hands of users was the greatest priority - a test environment would just get in the way and slow down the validation coming from having code running in production. When a new engineer started at IMVU, I had a simple rule: they had to ship code to production on their first day. Heres the key point.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

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