Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, February 11, 2009 The free software hiring advantage This is one of those startup tips Im a little reluctant to share, because its been such a powerful source of competitive advantage in the companies Ive worked with. Especially for a startup, not taking maximum advantage of free software is crazy.

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

VC Cafe

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

The approved projects involve innovations in the areas of life sciences, healthcare IT, electronics, software and energy. The BIRD Foundation promotes collaboration between Israeli and American companies in various technological fields for the purpose of joint product development.

Peru 96

Peru Technical Review North America 96

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

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. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 4, 2010 Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Kent Beck will give the opening keynote at the Startup Lessons Learned conference on April 23.

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

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. He has a good team, and theyve shipped a working product to many customers.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

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. I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. For software, the easiest batch to see is code. This is easiest to see in deployment.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Can this methodology be used for startups that are not exclusively about software?

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

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. Please leave feedback!) Do you fix bugs before writing code?

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

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

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. The breakthrough idea of agile is that software should be built iteratively, with the pieces that customers value most created first. Thats pretty clear.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

We wanted an agile approach that would allow us to build our software architecture as we needed it, without downtime, but also without large amounts of up-front cost. After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes. Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

This also literally can’t catch every problem, because your test sandboxes or test clusters will never be exactly like the production system. But I will tell you not to have too little or too much, because those definitely ruin the food or product. It would be hard to argue against this product development strategy, in general.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

This builds on a lot of great thinking that has come before, like the agile movements insistence that only the creation of working code counts as progress for a software development team. Customers dont care if you have good metrics, only if you have a good product. that justify decisions already made.

San Francisco 98

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Of all the tactics I have advocated as part of the lean startup , none has provoked as many extreme reactions as continuous deployment , a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. This condition makes it much easier for teams to innovate, experiment, and achieve sustained productivity.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

I thought Id share a little bit of that, too: I’ve been interested in different approaches to software development going back to 1987 when – in my first company Feld Technologies – my partner Dave Jilk and I started talking about “semi-custom software development&# (way ahead of its time).

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

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. Were a software company, so what we do everyday is turn ideas into code.

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

He doesnt put out crappy, buggy products and then ask for feedback. My normal answer is that I dont really think thats how Apple products are built. Thats what so many techniques that I advocate are all about: customer validation , minimum viable product , vision pivots , and even throwing away working code. It just wasnt great.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

It became harder and harder to separate how the software is built from how the software is structured. If not, whos going to insist we switch to free and open source software? Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said. But along the way, something strange happened. Massive proprietary databases?

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content. I know many people who think that software works like magic, but to me it actually was magic.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? When we build products, we use a methodology. For software, we have many - you can enjoy a nice long list on Wikipedia. We know some products succeed and others fail, but the reasons are complex and the unpredictable.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. In fact, this company hasn’t shipped any new products in months. What’s going on?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. But its helpful to take a detailed look inside the highly agile process used by Google to ship software. I think you can safely ignore the rantings about "bad agile" and the bad people who promote it.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 2, 2008 On deployment My favorite question to ask a software development team is "how do you do a release." How long does the software sit un-deployed? Software is generally always getting better or getting worse. How fast do they iterate? Does it require weeks of QA?

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

It is becoming easier and cheaper for companies to bring products to market, leveraging free and open source software , cloud computing, open social data (Facebook, OpenSocial ), and open distribution (AdWords, SEO). Agile software development. Agile allows companies to build higher quality software faster.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Or, phrased more hopefully, "I see how you can use continuous deployment to run an online consumer service, but how can it be used for B2B software?" That continuous deployment leads to lower quality software than software built in large batches. Most customers of most products hate new releases. Or variations thereof.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage. The biggest source of waste in new product development is building something that nobody wants. Unfortunately, customers hated that initial product.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

The Lean Startup: a Disciplined Approach to Imagining, Designing, and Building New Products.: It uses principles of agile software development, open source and web 2.0, Hey Someone else who is extending the agile/lean approach beyond just developing software. Labels: events 2comments: Andrew Meyer said.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Web Advisory Board 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

For those whove heard it, it contains a length discourse on the subject of agile software development and extreme programming, including its weaknesses when applied to startups. I had a background in lean manufacturing (book knowledge, anyway) and lean software development (hands on) before encountering Lean Startups.

Lean 140

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 140

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 1, 2008 Test-Driven Development as andon cord You cannot control what you cannot see, and the hardest part of managing software projects is that the final product is so intangible. This is equivalent of the andon cord in a Toyota production plant.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

This case presents a further complication: desktop software. Without being able transparently modify the software in situ, is it still possible to deploy on a continuous basis? Continuous Deployment is a process by which software is released several times throughout the day – in minutes versus days, weeks, or months.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Maybe operations has changed the OS configuration in production in a way that is incompatible with some developers change. In many traditional software organizations, branches can be extremely long-lived, and integrations can take weeks or months. I would like the users of my software to test and give their feedback to me.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

While the customer development framework of Four Steps is universally relevant, The Entrepreneur’s Guide updates its practices for modern startups. Four Steps primarily centers its stories and case studies on B2B hardware and software startups. In fact, they probably will. In fact, they probably will.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 13, 2008 Five Whys Taiichi Ohno was one of the inventors of the Toyota Production System. His book Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production is a fascinating read, even though its decidedly non-practical. Best of luck, Your Software." (OK, and so forth.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2009

Agile Vancouver : Lean Development for Lean Times On Tuesday April 21st, we are hosting an afternoon event on the application of Lean Principles to software development. This workshop brings together leading thinkers from Lean Production and Lean software. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Agile 60

Agile Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Kent Beck is deservedly famous for his many contributions in the software industry. Kent Beck is deservedly famous for his many contributions in the software industry. Do you know the difference between Durant and Sloan ? If not, youd better watch video of his talk ASAP. And then you can buy a t-shirt. And then you can buy a t-shirt.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

VC Cafe

JULY 2, 2012

Facebook’s acquisition of Face.com will enable the social network to embed face recognition software into its photo app. SHUTTERFLY ACQUIRES ISRAELI PHOTO SOFTWARE COMPANY PHOTOCCINO. Britain’s Apax Partners in cooperation with Baltimore, Maryland’s JMI Equity has purchased the US-Israeli software company Paradigm for $1 billion.

Latvia 109

Latvia Lithuania Russia 109

mashable.com

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

After all, high-quality open source software is free, the cloud makes computer power far less expensive, and anyone with an Internet connection can learn Ruby and CSS. For example, my company decided early on to hire a UI designer, which has helped tremendously with our product development.

Startup 79

Startup Social Media RSS Social Network 79