I’ve been building technology products for years, but when I read Eric Ries book “The Lean Startup” two weeks ago I knew I had fallen behind the curve. In order to catch up I needed to rapidly turn his theories into practice and apply them to my latest venture. If you have been learning about lean you may have found turning lean theories into practice is a daunting task. After spending a few days brainstorming on how to retrofit my business into lean to no avail I decided I needed to research a bit more. After a full day of searching, reading, and testing, I found what I needed to make the transition to lean a smooth and manageable process. Here are the results of my research:
1. GoLeanMean Incubator / Dashboard
The GoLeanMean team started two projects using the lean methodology, SendLove.to and BetterShift. As they developed each product they used an internal toolset called the LeanMean Dashbaord to manage their hypothesis testing and innovation accounting. It worked so well that within a few months of starting each project they decided to be part of the lean revolution itself and supply their system for entrepreneurs to use.
Recently they’ve gained funding and attention from VC’s and you can apply to be in their first “class” of entrepreneurs. If you are serious about being an entrepreneur I suggest you apply (I already have.)
Link: http://goleanmean.com/
Disclaimer: I invested personally in SendLove.to and had first hand experience with the team at GoLeanMean. They are in a very big way responsible for assisting my transition into lean.
2. Lean Canvas
Lean Canvas is a toolset created by Ash Maurya who’s focus is turning lean theories into practice. The tools Lean Canvas provides are best accompanied by his eBook ($19, or $15 if you tweet about it) which walks you through each step. Maurya does a phenomenal job transcribing customer development and lean concepts into concrete, actionable steps anyone can apply to a new business. Maurya will even give you a free 30-minute session to go over the tools with you which he schedules automatically for you with Tungle.me.
My meeting with Ash is set for next week and my Lean Canvas has been completed. I’ve shared it with my partner and we are focusing on making up for missed steps in the customer development process that may have been valuable. I’m looking forward to using the built-in hypothesis validation tools next week for our first experiments.
3. Books, Blogs, and More Books
These fall more into the “materials” category than the “tools” category. Here are the best lean and lean-related reads, I would describe the first three as “must-haves” and the rest as “nice to have”:
- The Lean Startup by Eric Ries – The father of the lean movement
- Running Lean by Ash Maurya – Mentioned earlier, helps turn theory into practice
- Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank – Much of your hypothesis testing comes in the form of customer development – this is the customer development bible.
- Ash Maurya Lean Workshops – He’s postponed these until next year (Jan 2012) but you can find updates on his website after then.
- Don’t Just Roll The Dice by Neil Davidson – Guide to software pricing, very short and available for free as a PDF if you search online.
- About Face 3 and Rocket Surgery Made Easy – The former focuses on interaction design but dives in deep to customer development. The latter focuses on usability interviews and is a short easy read. These are just “nice to have” supplement texts in my opinion.
I’m still on the hunt for more
The lean movement is still relatively new as far as shifts in business management paradigms go – there are limited products and services that support applying lean to your business. If you’ve found other useful resources please share them in the comment section below.