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Lessons Learned: Combining agile development with customer development

Startup Lessons Learned

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. The breakthrough idea of agile is that software should be built iteratively, with the pieces that customers value most created first. Hes often felt that there was something missing.

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Lessons Learned: The lean startup

Startup Lessons Learned

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. Of course, many startups are capital efficient and generally frugal. No more, no less.

Lean 168
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Lessons Learned: A new version of the Joel Test (draft)

Startup Lessons Learned

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. Please leave feedback!) When its receding, we rescope. Do you have a spec?

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The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part three

Startup Lessons Learned

The advantages of cross-functional teams are well documented, and for a thorough treatment I recommend the theory in the second half of Agile Software Development with Scrum. Scrum recommends 30 days; I have worked in one or two-week cycles up to about three months. At IMVU, we found 60 days was just about right.

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You don't need as many tools as you think

Startup Lessons Learned

Heres something I can relate to: We used assembla for subversion, scrums, milestones, wikis, and for general organizational purposes. Scrum reports would come in once a month, nobody was actually responsible for anything. My favorite instance of this is scheduling software. Take a look and let me know what you think.

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Lessons Learned: Built to learn

Startup Lessons Learned

This is true whether youre selling million-dollar software to huge enterprises or selling fifty-cent virtual clothes to teenagers. I have been using various forms of Agile development -- mainly XP and Scrum -- for many years, but only recently came across "customer development" which makes a whole lot of sense to me. Excellent post.

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Lessons Learned: The product manager's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

So the product manager winds up actually having to use the software, by hand, updating the spec and helping create a new test plan. Eventually, I hope to get them on a full agile diet, with TDD, scrums, sprints, pair programming, and more. The fourth spec exists only in these emails, which are changing the design in an ad-hoc fashion.