A Lean UX approach shows us that shipping, which basically is the big honkin’ Done in the Agile world, is in fact really only the beginning. While Agile methods help UX designers turn old ways of designing and communicating on their head, such as with conversation-centered documents, Lean UX helps us overturn old approaches to research and measuring quality. In a traditional model, research is something you do before starting to create the product.
If you conduct customer interviews then you should read Indi Young's book Mental Models. This illustration is a great summary of her approach though.
Nice piece with Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures.
After making a tidy sum with the sale of Instagram (his share of a cool $1bn from Facebook), he lifts the lid on what he looks for when investing early in companies. His hit rate is pretty darn good – as well as Instagram he made seed investments in Twitter, Path, OMGPOP and Heroku.
He wants founders who are thoughtful, but then make forceful decisions. This is important because few people get their idea exactly right on the first try. "As Instagram has proven with Brbn to Instagram, I find it really hard to believe that any one person will have the perfect maniacal vision right from the start .... So that's part of my assessment, hey, does this person have an opinion, based on a worldview that they've developed through listening, paying attention, and pondering.
Great to hear some validation from a successful investor that great products are rarely created according to their original plan. Don't be afraid to pivot!
...both business and baseball are highly competitive, and baseball provides simple, clear object lessons for just about anything that you might confront in assembling a team -- how to spend money, how to evaluate talent, how to measure success. It's filled with vivid illustrations about teams that vastly underperform, teams that outperform, teams with rigid philosophies, teams that are fluid and flexible in their function. Most of all, baseball lays bare the fact that it is damnably difficult to create a highly functioning team. It's really easy to assemble a bunch of individuals who don't give a shit about anything but their own achievements; it's a lot harder to assemble people who are willing to learn, willing to work with others, and willing to do whatever it takes to win...
*For non-US readers, replace baseball with football :)
Your product is NOT "the product".
Your "business model" is the product.
Your job isn't just building the best solution, but owning the entire business model and making all the pieces fit.
Recognising your business model as a product is empowering. Not only does it let you own your business model, but it also allows to you apply well-known techniques from product development to building your company.
I've come across this many times before. Where (deluded) startup founders believe their amazing solution is enough to build a scalable business. But sadly it's not that easy. There's much more to building a successful startup than just having a neat product.
Looks like the gov.uk bods are seeing the benefits of Lean for designing their own sites. I wonder when they'll start using it for their policies?
via getthefive.comMarketers like getting lost in data. However, lean start-up marketers cannot afford “analysis paralysis.” They need to move, and move fast. Every time you need to deploy BML - speed is of the essence. Your main goal is to not only validate your hypothesis (or invalidate it), but validate it as quickly as possible. Set goals for your data. If you have your hypothesis formed at the start of the week, make sure you can validate it by the end of the week. Set clear deadlines so you know that you are constantly rolling out your BML feedback loop.
Nice article in The Five using lean startup principles for a marketing campaign.
