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Lessons Learned: The product manager's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

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. The product manager was clearly struggling to get results from the rest of the team. Lets start with what the product manager does.

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Lessons Learned: Combining agile development with customer development

Startup Lessons Learned

XP and Scrum don’t have much to say - they punt. If you look at the origins of most agile systems, including Scrum and XP , they come out of experiences in big companies. Both Scrum and XP had a role which you could happily call by the modern title "Product Manager". Embedded in that assumption is why startups fail.

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

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

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, December 6, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part three Those startups that manage to build a product people want have to deal with the consequences of that success. And still being a startup means continuing to innovate as well as keep the lights on.

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Lessons Learned: The lean startup

Startup Lessons Learned

Very useful perspective - as a first-time CEO managing a small startup, these ideas are timely and thought-provoking. I would add -- think of your development and running your business like a PM/Developer uses Agile or Scrum in software development. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Less is more.

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Lessons Learned: Built to learn

Startup Lessons Learned

Metrics are people too" is a reminder I constantly needed when I was a manager. Well be discussing in greater detail the three techniques I highlighted at the Expo: continuous deployment, split-testing, and five whys. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Excellent post.

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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. While simple, it is easy to manage. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.