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Yes, you're missing something, because you are reasoning backwards. Lean shouldn't be a way of doing business where you pick the method first, then magic happe

Yes, you're missing something, because you are reasoning backwards. Lean shouldn't be a way of doing business where you pick the method first, then magic happens. Nope. You look for the magic, then adapt the method. The results drive the choice of activities, not the other way around. That's the entire idea. That's why it's different. So if your reasoning is "show me other people who use this method and do well" then you've already started on the wrong foot. A better question would be "what do startups that are successful do that we can copy?" Some of that might fit under the marketing term "lean". Some might not. Don't sweat it. Lean is about copying what works and stripping out what isn't helpful. That's it. Yes, there are some general things that generally work better than others, but those things are just templates for you to take and adapt as you see fit. Lean is about nothing if not adapting. I would never look at a lean practice and say "This practice will make me successful" because that's whacked. In a startup situation even if you were "perfect" you will probably fail. Instead, I would look at a successful team and say something like "Cool. There's a lean practice I can test in my situation" We don't know all the answers when we talk about how lean applies to startups. Hell, we don't even know the questions. But it looks like there are some useful concepts we can copy and experiment with. That's what so cool about it.

rbarooah 16y ago
Lean is about copying what works and stripping out what isn't unhelpful. That's it. Who could possibly disagree with doing that? We're all lean now!
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  Like dieting, more people will say they agree with this than will actually do it. How do people fail? There are many ways; here are two: They use the wrong definition for "what works". "What works for me", "what works for the management team", "what works in the lab", "what works in theory", "what works for the people who don't pay", and "what works for my highly-recommended and talented designer" are not necessarily the same thing as "what works". They don't "strip out". They talk a good game about focus, but when push comes to shove they don't really throw away anything. It's hard to throw away a feature that you've worked three whole hours on. It'll come in handy someday. Somebody will use it. If we deprecate it, it will annoy all three people in its installed base and they will Tweet nasty words. It's already built; how much can it cost to maintain it in our spare time? It's profitable -- one penny per user per year, but we'll make it up in volume. We'll look stupid if we don't have it. We're expanding, and the new hires will help us maintain it. It's a loss leader. The VCs really loved its demo. Techcrunch is wild about it. Your mom smiles when she sees it. It helps kittens and puppies; think of the puppies.
  - rbarooah 16y ago
    Agreed. So how does a new label fix that?
  - billmcneale 16y ago
    > Like dieting, more people will say they agree with this than will actually do it. "It works! If it doesn't work for you, it's because you're doing it wrong!" Now... where have I heard this before? Oh right, Agile.
melvinram 16y ago
Sounds to me like a hollow, bullshit term when you put it that way. If that's what "lean" is, then we should just call it learning best practices. From what I understand, "lean" as Eric Ries & Steve Blank describes it has a very specific meaning and it's mostly a collection of activities that is suppose to lead to fast, customer-driven product development and better ROI on marketing dollars, while reducing wasteful activities that suck up time and money. Coming from this perspective, I find Edward's query worth exploring. I'm no "lean" expert so I might be wrong. I've been looking forward to Eric's upcoming book to read and get a better grasp of what he's talking about. :D Update: This presentation provides some real insight into how Steve Blank and Eric Ries define lean startup: http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/customer-development-past-present-future-steve-blank-111909 http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/customer-development-past-p...
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  Lean is taking a process and stripping out everything that is not necessary -- thereby making it lean. Practitioners will take that a step farther and claim that there is some irreducible set of activities that somehow guarantee results. It's been my experience that such practitioners commonly overstate their case, thereby creating an opportunity for dissapointment with folks like the article author. This is a never-ending treadmill: some great guy jumps into agile or lean, has a few good projects, and suddenly is an expert on it. So he writes a book with his "prescriptions" Some folks buy, some folks balk. There are videos, seminars, folks who "get it", folks who do not, etc. It just goes on and on. Please don't take that as cynicism on my part, because it's not meant that way. I think it's up to the people who are serious about this to decide if they want to work at a meta level -- understanding the concepts that are being applied and feeling free to include or toss things -- or if they simply want a recipe book. If you want a recipe book, good luck to you. There are a lot of them out there, and more will be coming in the decades ahead. I don't mean that in a snarky way. I am eagerly looking forward to where the agile startup movement is going because I think it's going to have an immensely positive impact on all kinds of things. But if you don't understand which questions to ask, as this author did not, you will never be happy with the answers. This author had a poor model of the problem he was trying to solve. This model will continue to prevent him from being satisfied until he changes it.

rbarooah 16y ago

Lean is about copying what works and stripping out what isn't unhelpful. That's it. Who could possibly disagree with doing that? We're all lean now!

mechanical_fish 16y ago
Like dieting, more people will say they agree with this than will actually do it. How do people fail? There are many ways; here are two: They use the wrong definition for "what works". "What works for me", "what works for the management team", "what works in the lab", "what works in theory", "what works for the people who don't pay", and "what works for my highly-recommended and talented designer" are not necessarily the same thing as "what works". They don't "strip out". They talk a good game about focus, but when push comes to shove they don't really throw away anything. It's hard to throw away a feature that you've worked three whole hours on. It'll come in handy someday. Somebody will use it. If we deprecate it, it will annoy all three people in its installed base and they will Tweet nasty words. It's already built; how much can it cost to maintain it in our spare time? It's profitable -- one penny per user per year, but we'll make it up in volume. We'll look stupid if we don't have it. We're expanding, and the new hires will help us maintain it. It's a loss leader. The VCs really loved its demo. Techcrunch is wild about it. Your mom smiles when she sees it. It helps kittens and puppies; think of the puppies.
- rbarooah 16y ago
  Agreed. So how does a new label fix that?
- billmcneale 16y ago
  > Like dieting, more people will say they agree with this than will actually do it. "It works! If it doesn't work for you, it's because you're doing it wrong!" Now... where have I heard this before? Oh right, Agile.

melvinram 16y ago

Sounds to me like a hollow, bullshit term when you put it that way. If that's what "lean" is, then we should just call it learning best practices. From what I understand, "lean" as Eric Ries & Steve Blank describes it has a very specific meaning and it's mostly a collection of activities that is suppose to lead to fast, customer-driven product development and better ROI on marketing dollars, while reducing wasteful activities that suck up time and money. Coming from this perspective, I find Edward's query worth exploring. I'm no "lean" expert so I might be wrong. I've been looking forward to Eric's upcoming book to read and get a better grasp of what he's talking about. :D Update: This presentation provides some real insight into how Steve Blank and Eric Ries define lean startup: http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/customer-development-past-present-future-steve-blank-111909 http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/customer-development-past-p...

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Lean is taking a process and stripping out everything that is not necessary -- thereby making it lean. Practitioners will take that a step farther and claim that there is some irreducible set of activities that somehow guarantee results. It's been my experience that such practitioners commonly overstate their case, thereby creating an opportunity for dissapointment with folks like the article author. This is a never-ending treadmill: some great guy jumps into agile or lean, has a few good projects, and suddenly is an expert on it. So he writes a book with his "prescriptions" Some folks buy, some folks balk. There are videos, seminars, folks who "get it", folks who do not, etc. It just goes on and on. Please don't take that as cynicism on my part, because it's not meant that way. I think it's up to the people who are serious about this to decide if they want to work at a meta level -- understanding the concepts that are being applied and feeling free to include or toss things -- or if they simply want a recipe book. If you want a recipe book, good luck to you. There are a lot of them out there, and more will be coming in the decades ahead. I don't mean that in a snarky way. I am eagerly looking forward to where the agile startup movement is going because I think it's going to have an immensely positive impact on all kinds of things. But if you don't understand which questions to ask, as this author did not, you will never be happy with the answers. This author had a poor model of the problem he was trying to solve. This model will continue to prevent him from being satisfied until he changes it.