Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

That’s because many of our reports feed us vanity metrics: numbers that make us look good but don’t really help make decisions. Yet even among those who have access to good actionable metrics, I’ve noticed a phenomenon that prevents taking maximum advantage of data. Too much of this data is non- actionable.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule. Compared to the million-dollar startup, they are operating at micro-scale.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Indeed the first thing I thought when I read the first paragraphs that the product manager was operating in a white tower and that the developers felt disenfranchised. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? This post has been removed by the author. Nice write-up.

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San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations. When operating with continuous deployment, its almost impossible to have integration conflicts. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Small batches reduce overhead.

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San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

In management jobs related to operations – that is, the people tasked with actually making and distributing physical products – this kind of thinking is now considered ludicrous, thanks to a century of progress. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

This is another sub-optimization caused by incentivizing the wrong metric. For example, lets say you dont have an operations team, and so youre still getting paged late at night when servers crash. Is it time to make your first operations hire? This is a variant of the time-quality-money fallacy , and it is not necessarily true.

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Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. What is customer development?

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 18, 2010 Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases non-events The following is a case study of one entrepreneurs transition from a traditional development cycle to continuous deployment. Many people still find this idea challenging, even for companies that operate solely on the web.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

When it becomes possible to build products "live" with customers, the cycle time changes and design becomes a much more dynamic process. We still struggle to create Firm software that is defect-free, and it still requires customer insight (and maybe some customer development) to discover what will Delight.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

You can train your operations or customer service staff on how it works - all live in the production environment. Monitoring of real-world metrics. In order to make continuous deployment work, teams have to get good at automated monitoring and reacting to business and customer-centric metrics, not just technical metrics.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

One large source of waste in development is “double-checking.&# For example, imagine a team operating in a traditional waterfall development system, without continuous deployment, test-driven development, or continuous integration. When a developer wants to check-in code, this is a very scary moment.

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Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

these devices all need human instruction to enable correct and desired operation. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

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Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Lean vs. debt In the world of physical goods, the leaner a supply chain is, the less debt is required to operate it. The results were that the Israeli system became operational 10 years ago, while the THAAD project is starting to finally be deployed this year after 10 years of delay. pay 'interest'). Eric, great post.

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Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

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? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Because there are no tests for new features (or operational alerts for the production code), the code that supports those new features could go bad at any moment. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 23, 2009

Customers say,&# Give me feature X,&# “Give me feature Y,&# and sometimes you do what they want, maybe sometimes you’re going to do what you want, and then they get mad at you. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Take a look and let me know what you think.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Audio 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 21, 2008

By the standard of "customer value," most innovation-seeking experiments are waste. Lean startups operate by a different standard. I suggest they define waste as "every activity that does not contribute to learning about customers." (aka By the standard of "customer value," most innovation-seeking experiments are waste.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 121

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

You also need to know what each one cares about, which metrics they look at (or studiously ignore). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? What are the job titles of the people you need to convince?

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Advertising San Francisco Media Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. Creating a company-wide feedback loop that incorporates both customer development and agile development is a challenge.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

FYI the surveymonkey link isnt operational. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

But it goes beyond that, including techniques for improving the economics of product development. Reinertsen weaves together ideas from lean manufacturing, maneuver warfare, queuing theory, and even the architecture of computer operating systems and the Internet. percent utilization in the precourse surveys. What will this do?

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Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. What is customer development?

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Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

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. For my first time, it was scalability problems and our operations team. why didnt operations get paged? How do you get started with five whys?

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

Some questions have a natural escalation path (like working through the standard operations on a linked-list) and others require some more creativity. Any of these answers can work, and depending on what they choose, it usually makes sense to keep probing along these lines: which operations are the most expensive?

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San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Have you met that prickly operations guy who seems to love servers more than people (but would never let them fail on his watch)? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

The idea was that these two people would operate as a unit, with the mentors job performance during this period evaluated by the performance of the new person. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 22, 2008 Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to measure customer satisfaction Ive mentioned Net Promoter Score (NPS) in a few previous posts, but havent had a chance to describe it in detail yet. What is customer development? Lo, my 1032 subscribers, who are you?

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.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Maybe two different developers made changes to the same underlying subsystem, but in incompatible ways. Maybe operations has changed the OS configuration in production in a way that is incompatible with some developers change. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I started my last company with 100% off-shore resources because I could never have completed Customer Development at a reasonable cost of money or regulatory burden had I employed US Citizens. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

I’ve seen many times what happens when a single department get’s holed-up in its own space, like the terrifying “ operations cave.&# I’ve seen many times what happens when a single department get’s holed-up in its own space, like the terrifying “ operations cave.&#

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San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

When youve mastered that, consider adding operations, customer service, marketing, product management, business development - the idea is that when the team needs to get approval or support from another department, they already have an "insider" who can make it happen. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

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San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 13, 2010 The Superbowl ad test I am a firm believer in the danger of vanity metrics , numbers that give the illusion of progress but often mask the true relationship between cause and effect. Vanity metrics are generally bigger. Vanity metrics. The solution? Is that really news?

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

A given customer would have an entity URL that looked like this: customer://1234 Somewhere in your API, you have a way to access data about a given customer. Im not talking about high-level abstractions (like an object-oriented view of a customers data). Im talking about the actual data-fetching operation.

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 20, 2009

They started building BASIC interpreters, but evolved into the worlds largest operating systems monopoly. In a presentation you gave to one of Steves classes you mentioned how common sense all this customer development stuff seems in theory, but is relatively difficult to pull off on in practice.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

Twenty years from now, operating systems might also work as a good metaphor. However, attempting to slot a market stereotype matrix on to the environment in which your start-up operates isnt always going to be particularly fruitful. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Ruby Lean 89

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

But I think debates about which language, which operating system, even which editor (emacs, vim, Visual Studio) can go on forever. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? However, it made me remember that Im tired of technology arguments.

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PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. What is customer development?

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Campaign San Francisco Lean Agile 84