I finished reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries on the train this morning. I recently started reading it on the train to and from my new work recently. I've learned some important things which which stood out for me, those aside the underlying message is roughly this:

If you want to survive as a startup, in the uncertain world that it finds itself in, you need to basically a) drop the ego, b) track the right metrics that indicate progress and c) constantly experiment/innovate to indicate the success or failure of your time and efforts. I think its the last one which is the most interesting to me because I think its the most important and the most difficult to quantify and qualify. I left out one: Keep trying to find a way - whatever it takes.

These ideas dovetail with other ideas like, in experimenting often, you increase the feedback loop, you learn quicker and fail quicker etc.

This is all not new to modern software developers. We do this all the time. The Agile process we use in software development, is probably also based on the LEAN methodologies that came out of Toyota etc - particularly the concept of developing MVPs(Minimum viable products) and short cycles of iterative development.

Here are 50 of my favourite and important ideas that stood out for me:

  1. You need to measure progress in extreme uncertainty.
  2. Measuring productivity will be diffirent in a start-up.
  3. There should be an emphasis on short iterations, deliverable products - the AGILE/LEAN Methodology
  4. Tinkering at something is a great way to fine tune and find niggles. Do experiments using your experimentation system
  5. Many startups are more likly to plan to launch a rocket ship than to plan to drive a car. (Over-complicated/over-engineering)
  6. Details are important but over-arching assumption proving/debunking is better. 
  7. The Build-measure-learn process helps tuning the engine.
  8. Experiment all the time - this is a valuable, provided its with the customer in mind.
  9. It is important to build an innovation factory which is based on an experimentation system.*
  10. We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.
  11. "Validated learning is demonstrating that a team has discovered valuable truths about a startup's present and future business prospects."
  12. A telephone is not useful by itself but becomes useful when everyone has one. (having the only telephone in the world isn't useful)
  13. Ones predictions and expections can be wrong. Save space and make provision for wrong assumptions and dont tie down your strategy such that you cannot change it easily in the face of these changes.
  14. Make your strategies flexible.
  15. Customers can refuse to use/realise your great view of the world and can quite happily reject it at a whim - dont assume they will see it your way.
  16. Learn important insights from your customers.
  17. Aim for value-creating efforts, align them with your customer's problems.
  18. Value is defined as providing benefit to the customers
  19. Incorrect strategic assumptions happen - expect that you've made some unchecked assumptions.
  20. Lay out all your assumptions on the table, routinely*
  21. Discover flaws in our assumptions by testing them with experiementation
  22. Experimentation is innovative.*
  23. Learning must be backed by customer data and validatable*
  24. What customers would accept is diffirent to what you think they might.
  25. Assumptions are the root to all evil.
  26. Ready-to-fail experiments are important.
  27. Figuring what to build is a startup's dillema
  28. Perform experiments to answer questions and assumptions, preferably one for assumptions/answer required.
  29. Experiments take a lot less time than stratagic planning does, its usually not a waste of time.
  30. Success is not delivering a feature, its solving a customers problem
  31. Experiments are the basis for learning with the customer in mind - a mechanism to validate your time.
  32. Learning milestones need to be sufficiently shared and exposed - Latest progress with Excel JavaScript plugin and Reflections on Excel JavaScript Add-in but sadly not exposed sufficiently.
  33. "Innovation accounting" in a nutshell is 3 steps MVP+Tune=Pivot Or Abandon.
  34. Basing choices on first hand understanding of customers is important
  35. Way back, the average consumer at that time was not conversant with personal computers to know if they want to use them in a new way ( or even use tem at all)
  36. Any additional work beyond what is required to start learning is a waste.
  37. Messy results and bad quality test results are better than assumptions - tests can be messy and that's ok if they validate assumptions in either direction.
  38. The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.
  39. Have a Dose of reality
  40. Are you making the product better? Yes? How do you know?
  41. Disruptive innovation is what you are aiming for*
  42. Test your riskiest assumptions first.
  43. Validated learning kanban board is interesting - turn 'done' into 'validated'
  44. Every story in validated kanband must be validated - stories need to provide answers to the question - how can this be validated.
  45. All Validation needs to be with the customer in mind
  46. Best practise can be a waste of time - we're a startup not an industry vetran
  47. Working in small batches is better (Finish a complete envolope before moving to the next one) - easier to change strategy
  48. Reduce your work in progress - its clusttering your time, mind and its wastage if unresolved.
  49. An investment should be small in something that brings small pain, while larger in those that bring long or larger pain. (L EAN - just in time) : proportional investment approach.
  50. Critisism is not damaging, its important as a way to adapt or continue. Don't be overly defensive.

And then came a revalation:

A common practise is for the inventor of a new product or feature to manage the subsequent resources, team or division that ultimately commercializes it. As a result, strong creative managers wind up getting stuck working on the growth and the optimization of products rather than creating new ones. This is why established companies struggle to foster innovation in the first place.

 

  • Concious effort is important
    Insist that assumptions be started explicitly and tested rigorously out of a genuine desire to discover the truth that underlies a project's vision.

And now for my master drawings... which tries to bring most of all this together for me:

Which is more comprehensibly squashed into these 4 points:

  • Uncertainty as input into experiments.
  • Experiments drive innovation and test assumptions
  • Experiments with the customer in mind and assessing assumptions is a way of calibrating R&D
  • Aim to do just what is required, to reduce waste on that which you did but was not required(waste)

 A little word about innovation

Research and development then can be seen as value obtained from researching and developing stuff, and its valuable. To quantify its value you need to define your two points in your measurement strategy, for me having read this book, those would be all about how the research and development benefits the customer.

Its easy and in my opinion wrong, to say its all about anything that helps us(the company, the development team, the sales person) achieve our goal or our vision. This gets you nicely trapped in thinking that everything you do is worthwhile because everything you do you deem important enough to consider ad do in the first place - you self validate your ideas and actions. But its puts out of sight the customer and focuses on what you've already assumed: That this will obviously benefit the customer.

Assumptions are bad. Bring every choice you make relative to the customer. Every piece of research and development needs to satisfy the questions. Does this benefit the customer, In which way will the customer smile at this? Will they notice it? Is it that important fo the customer that we do this. Customer customer customer. Now obviously there will be folks that don't exclusively see this point as useful. That's how you can measure research and development: its how useful that work is to the customer. If its not useful, then your wasting your research and development budget.

I think that no matter the task that any employee is doing, whether that be in software development, sales or accounting - a simple universal question, in plain English, "how will that/this benefit the customer?" could be asked of anyone to anyone irrespective of their expertise in whatever areas they are in. If a software engineer can be asked that about what he is working on by an accountant and they both agree - this is then alignment with customer's needs. That's why everything should be realitive to a customer's needs.

The next thing I'd like to talk about is experimentation and innovation. To innovate in many ways includes finding new ways to succeed. Anyone who can answer the question, what are do doing to innovate most will be unsure how to answer the question - unless they've been working on something new - an innovative project. They can then easily answer that question because its in the forefront of their minds. The time and effort they put into their own projects they belive in constantly answer the questions "why is this useful, why is this useful" over and over again while they are doing it and as they discover new things and enjoy it, the constantly answer that question "this is why, this is so cool". This is innovation. Now aligning this with creative endevour with a companies objectives (one of which is a customer's problems being resolved) is how innovation is done. Innovation projects are like 'inventions' and each person participating is an inventor and thats how they feel bound and commited to that idea of whatever they are doing - thats how innovation endues.

Towards the end of the book and once I felt that i had obtained the needed messages that the book tries to convey, I felt this it did drag on a bit.

I think the most important part of the book for me is fairly evident - its where I stopped making notes and scribbling in my book. For me this was around Part I(Vision), though I did some some scribbles in and around part II(Steer) but found it and part III(Accelerate) quite laborious. This is personal of course, those topics didn't particularly resonate with me, though possible quite important and relevant to others.