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. You can follow some of that debate here and here ; I continue to believe that this idea is correct.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

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. This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

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

APRIL 4, 2010

Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. To his credit are Extreme Programming , jUnit, patterns, TDD , the list goes on. Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. To his credit are Extreme Programming , jUnit, patterns, TDD , the list goes on.

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Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

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. Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. Small batches mean faster feedback.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

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. The idea is that once we move to the new system (or coding standard, or API, or.)

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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.

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Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 11, 2010

Most of the companies we invest in release software at least once a month. Designate one person in charge of managing the hackathon. This way all of the activity is captured and can be reviewed afterwards. Not all of the hackathon projects need to be about code. Some release weekly, or even daily.

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Software Review Wiki Continuous Deployment Agile 138

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. If not, whos going to insist we switch to free and open source software?

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CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. I have personally sold many copies of his book, and continue to recommend it as one of the most important books a startup founder can read.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. I met one recently that is working on a really innovative product, and the stories I heard from their development team made me want to cringe.

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San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

crowdSPRING Blog

DECEMBER 8, 2011

These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Design for Continuous Deployment – [link]. 40 Quality Photoshop UI Design Tutorials – [link]. A Look Inside Mobile Design Patterns – [link].

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. But there is more to technical debt than just the interest payments that come due.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 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. Moreover, approaching the problem from the direction that I had intuitively is a recipe for never reaching a point where continuous deployment is feasible.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

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

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. They take things like unit testing, design documents and code reviews more seriously than any other company Ive even heard about. Dates are irrelevant.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

Since then, PHP (as part of the LAMP stack ) has really been the dominant development platform, at least in the free software and startup worlds. And yet I keep returning to PHP as a development platform, as have most of my fellow startup CTOs. Memory-resident code made it slightly slower to iterate on scripts.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

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 Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2013

Eric has talked often about recognizing a startup as an organization designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Although every organization faces some uncertainty in developing new stuff, the conditions are not always extreme. in ten years? Note that this isn’t a free process.

Lean 165

Lean Technical Review Startup Software Review 165

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

You refer to an anonymous Valley-based MMORPG that consumed years and tens of millions in development, but got little commercial traction. Critical also, as the lean company/start-up can not be lean by just using lean principles in IT and not in Product Development/Management - a common misinterpretation of the Toyota Production System.

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San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

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. This is precisely the dilemma that the doctrine of minimum viable product is designed to solve.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The goal is to have split-testing be a continuous part of our development process, so much so that it is considered a completely routine part of developing a new feature. The new design improved on the old one in several ways, but these improvements didnt translate all the way through the funnel.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

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. The meeting was tense.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Due to an interaction effect between your hardware, solar flares, and quantum flux, this virus will crash your computer and erase your hard drive sometime soon. In the past, we invested in brilliant architecture, code reuse, refactoring, modular design, etc. I have detected a secret virus in your CPU.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

And a special thanks is due to all of our presenters, panelists, and mentors. When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. Kent Beck is deservedly famous for his many contributions in the software industry. We all owe him our thanks for persevering.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

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? We also learned that law is code , and that leadership was needed to build thriving communities in a digital age. Can I send you a review copy?

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

It allows teams to diagnose sources of waste in their development process and continuously improve, reversing the usual trend of teams getting slower over time. These problems can be anything: development mistakes, site outages, marketing program failures, or even internal missed schedules. My experience is: usually not.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

And do your customer development. Im also excited to share two long-form reviews from actual attendees. Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. That meant getting designers, programmers, and QA folks to cross-train and work together as peers.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 3, 2009

We were talking about what went right and wrong in the companys development process, when one (relatively new) employee said something like "I noticed that problem, but I couldnt do anything about it." At IMVU , these were quite common (after all, were shipping code 50 times a day). For example, lets consider job descriptions.

Employee 146

Employee San Francisco Lean Software Review 146

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Insist on high levels of usability, UI design, and polish. Without conscious process design, product development teams turn lines of code written into momentum in a certain direction. This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development. Build a truly mainstream product. Focus on quality.

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San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

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. This shift allowed us to crank out working software quickly as a service. It was a disaster.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

I had a lot of use for this concept back when I worked on game design and virtual worlds. In order to maintain game play balance, game designers have to take into account the needs of customers who have an excess of four different assets: time , money , skill , and passion. Having a balanced ecosystem is what game designers strive for.

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

I believe it is a full, company-wide turn through the OODA loop (for a software business, see especially Ideas-Code-Learn ). You need a process for systematically reviewing your costs and eliminating those that slow you down. Customer Development Engineering : techniques for accelerating your product development.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Even with only a few months of development, third parties have crammed every single category in the store full of apps. All I see is a name, an icon, a price, the developers name, and a review star-rating. The reviews are all over the map. The reviews are all over the map. And what distinguishes a good app?

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

All successful media companies had at their heart a series of editors, producers, and agents tasked with discovering and developing new talent. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. 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

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

At a certain point in IMVU’s development, we faced a difficult choice. In fact, I am convinced that if you could find some of IMVU’s earliest adopters, they would say something like this: “sure, those guys at IMVU HQ were helpful in writing code and stuff, but in the end they were just the hired help.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2008

The credit is due to much smarter people than me, and to the incredible power of necessity, that mother of invention. Some products, like Habbo Hotel or World of Warcraft, employ professional artists and designers to create compelling virtual goods that players want to buy. Yes, I have had to deal with developers on strike.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68