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What can we learn from The Lean Startup

I was listening to Eric Ries The Lean Startup with the subtitle How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, last week.


I have not thought myself as a startup where the thoughts from the book could apply. In my definition a startup create a product/service to put into the market and is a team to deliver this work. I’m just a single person working on a bunch of different ideas. I’m working on software and information products to the SAP market.

The way Eric defines a Startup is:

    A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

In this context I am a startup and I can see that the contexts and ideas apply much more to me. I do work under conditions of extreme uncertainty. I’m not really sure how I can make sure to sell my product and services. I know that it is possible, but I need to find the solution to really expand the market.

One probably more important aspect is the ability to measure how we are doing. For the startup to be successful and compete with big companies, they need to be learning at a much faster pace. The only way to be a better learner is to have ability to measure what works and what does not work.

I have always known that it is a good thing to make A/B testing of website or other solutions that you put into the market. Also look at the number of visitors on your website and see what makes everything convert. It take consistent practice to be sure that you follow up on the areas. But it is one of the things that often are not done. It is a bit too complicated and you don’t know what the result means.

What was your take aways from the book.

 

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Personal Kanban Mapping work | Navigating Life

Personal Kanban Mapping work | Navigating Life by Jim Benson and Torianne DeMaria Berry.

i have an interest in lean or agile development , be cause it gives great opportunities for making improvments in a place where you don’t have fixed processes. Kanban is one of the principles related to ie scrum. It is a little different how you are visulatizing the data.

 

Personal Kanban is about visualizing the work you are doing so you are able to handle it. I think the kanban part is really important because it gives some great options for users. This is normally done on a board of some part.

 

An important part is to limit your Work in progress (WIP). This is all the task that you are currently working on in any way. If you can reduce the number of distinct items you are working on at any one point you have more mental capacity and it will be easier to handle the different work items.

 

With the visualisation you will be able to see what your throughput is and how long time it takes to handle any one task.

 

We are dealing with the real world, so it is not always that we are able to block everything off and just work on what we want. A good example is now when I was just interrupted by a Text message that I choose to react to. It could be import, but it was not.

Personally we often get stuck in the state over complication, where we make everything way to complicated to handle.

The goal is to have task that are pulled, where you as a person decide which one to use. Push is just to take the first thing in the inbox and react on it.

A list programmer is most often superior because they take the time to know why they are building the software in the first place. This gives some clarity and makes it more compelling to workon. I guess that it is something like building a wall or a cathedral. The clarity helps with giving growth.

I you cannot see the work it is uncontrolled and we should never do more work than we can handle. I guess that it is an important part that we are able to know what we can do and not do more.

Currently I think I have too many tasks on that I’m working on to be successful with it. I know that it is difficult to say no to projects whey they are there and you think it is good for you.

The last thing is the POMODORO principle where you are focusing on some work for 25 minutes and then take 5 mintus of. This will help build your focus and make sure that you can get much longer in your progress. It is a really difficult discipline to use and it requires a lot of self control. It is so nice and much easier to work on other peoples projects than our own.

I’m currently reading about how to use normal Kanban in product development.

I did like the book it gave an overview of what kanban is about and the importace of stopping with all the work that you are doing.