Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

Jonathan Irwin will lead a workshop on advanced interview skills , including the different kinds of customer interviews, how to develop questions, and how to apply the answers to an actual decision around a product. By the end of his workshop, you will know how to apply innovation accounting to truly track the progress of your product.

Continuous Deployment 162

Continuous Deployment Norway Lean Analytics 162

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. We didnt think wed able to compete with that.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process. (See

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

I was an engineer on the engineering team. The art team would often be involved in the specification phase of a new feature, since they were responsible for the look-and-feel of the product. For one, the engineers consider the artists stupid; the artists consider the engineers arrogant. The meeting was tense.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

If you havent seen it, Pascals recent presentation on continuous deployment is a must-see; slides are here. It’s common, perhaps the norm, for startups to pivot like that—to discover that a product is catching on in unintended ways worth pursuing. kaChing has been very active in the Lean Startup movement.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

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. For more on continuous deployment, see Just-in-time Scalability.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Continuous deployment and continuous learning At long last, some of the actual implementers of the advanced systems we built at IMVU for rapid deployment and rapid response are starting to write about it. At IMVU it’s a core part of our culture to ship.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." You get increasing growth by optimizing the viral loop , and you get revenue as a side-effect, assuming you have even the most anemic monetization scheme baked into your product.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, and more ► January (6) Lo, my 18891 subscribers, who are you?

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 11, 2010

I’ve become a big advocate of true Agile development (partly because of my experience with Rally Software – the leader in Agile software development environments) and – more recently – the notion of trying to get to continuous deployment which has been popularized by Eric Ries. Not all of the hackathon projects need to be about code.

Software Review 138

Software Review Wiki Continuous Deployment Agile 138

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering. But since I spent a long time in a hybrid CTO/VP Engineering role, I still have this nagging question. I want to add one last idea, even though I recognize it is controversial, bordering on the boundary between the CTO and VP Engineering. Heres my take.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. Every startup has a chance to change the world, by bringing not just a new product, but an entirely new institution into existence. hey eric, love the blog.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 16, 2009 Continuous deployment with downloads One of my goals in writing posts about topics like continuous deployment is the hope that people will take those ideas and apply them to new situations - and then share what they learn with the rest of us.

Continuous Deployment 68

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Labels: agile , continuous deployment 1 comments: timothyfitz said. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. and more ► January (6) Lo, my 18891 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 21, 2013

This past spring we stumbled on a genius idea – in order to make our publisher products work, we were scanning millions of articles and categorizing them by politicians, issues and popularity, among other dimensions. ha) take all that data and package it up for politicians, in a product to help them monitor their earned media.We

Lean 152

Lean Startup Metrics Silicon Valley 152

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 work hard to keep their house in order at all times, and there are strict rules and guidelines in place that prevent engineers and teams from doing things their own way. Focus on launching.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, June 2, 2010 The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business Review) I continue my series for Harvard Business Review with the Lean Startup technique called Five Whys. Five Whys has its origins in the Toyota Production System. Five Whys has its origins in the Toyota Production System.

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. Nothing made any difference.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

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. But, over the years I’ve realized that the toughest problem - the one that matters most and was consistently the most challenging - was figuring out what the product backlog should be.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

We can choose to continue paying the interest, or we can pay down the principal by refactoring the quick and dirty design into the better design. The human tendency to moralize about debt affects engineers, too. The biggest source of waste in new product development is building something that nobody wants.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

One of the topics that raised heated debate was whether I had conflated technical design with product design , because I made the admittedly counter-intuitive claim that sometimes good technical design actually leads to increased technical debt. The argument itself got me thinking a lot about design and its role in building products.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. You can learn more about that by reading The engineering managers lament.) leanstartup We organized our engineering team at IMVU to try and maximize cross-functional collaboration. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Continuous Deployment 113

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Everyone was in the flow; the team was hyper-productive. In many cases, they did the impossible, building a new product faster, cheaper, and better than anyone could have predicted.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

In the very early days, the trick is to find anyone at all who can understand you when you are talking about your product. In our first year at IMVU, we thought we were building a 3D avatar chat product. As product people, we thought of competition in terms of features. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

The Lean Startup: a Disciplined Approach to Imagining, Designing, and Building New Products.: Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ▼ 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Expo (and a call for he.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Web Advisory Board 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Do the engineers understand what they are building? After an hour with a team talking dirty about deployment, youll know. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Its different from selling a product, because it is not part of our regular business practice, is not something that relates to our core competence, and tends not to happen in a repeatable and scalable way. Most important slide: lessons learned Working product Key questions: what does the product do? whats the launch plan?

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, and more ► January (6) Lo, my 18891 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

If all the engineers work on the same thing at the same time, and all the marketers do the same, and QA, and ops, all the way down the line, then each department develops its own team-based private reality. Now picture product prioritization meetings in such a company. Now picture product prioritization meetings in such a company.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

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. Most commonly, that’s uncertainty about whether you can build the product at all (what MBAs call “technical risk”) or whether anybody will use or buy it (“market risk”). in ten years?

Lean 165

Lean Technical Review Startup Software Review 165

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

Building on this, I’ve recently become fascinated with the notion of continuous deployment , a concept that has been popularized by Eric Ries and others. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Read the rest. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, and more ▼ January (6) Lo, my 18891 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 119

San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

The results of the Customer Development process may indicate that the assumptions about your product, your customers and your market are all wrong. They tell them to persist in their dream of building a great product and/or company, no matter what the odds are or what the market might be telling them – success is just around the corner.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166