Posts Tagged leanstartup
My Lean Startup Interview
Posted by David Bland in agile on October 13, 2011
The folks at DZone were kind enough to invite me over for a chat during Agile2011 to have a conversation about agile, kanban and lean startup.
Rewind Your Mind
Posted by David Bland in agile, user stories on September 1, 2011
“A good engineer thinks in reverse and asks himself about the stylistic consequences of the components and systems he proposes” – Helmut Jan
This advice is not limited to engineers. It also applies to many of us who want to produce software that actually matters to people.
Thinking in reverse, yet leaning forward can yield innovative results. This can be especially helpful when you feel as though you’ve become stagnant in your day to day activities.
Applied to Lean Startup
As the Lean Startup movement continues to gain momentum, one has to be careful not to blindly speed through the Build -> Measure -> Learn loops.
As Eric Ries stated in his Mixergy interview, even though you act in… [Read More]
Stop Blaming Waterfall
Posted by David Bland in agile, lean, waterfall on July 19, 2011
I’m here to let you in on a little secret, waterfall isn’t the reason your project failed. Waterfall isn’t the reason you were fired. Waterfall isn’t the epitome of evil in the world of software development.
Blaming waterfall for all of your woes is not unlike blaming the screwdriver you used to paint your wall. It isn’t the screwdriver’s fault you chose the wrong tool for the job.
Waterfall works well when both the problem and the solution are known.
Since I always get chastised for this statement, let me clarify that I’m not the first person to state this and also let me clarify that we never fully know anything.
So if I were to rephrase this for the word police, it would be:
Waterfall works well when both the problem and the solution are mostly known.. … [Read More]
How to Create a Business Model Canvas in Google Docs
Posted by David Bland in bmgen on June 7, 2011
A Business Model Canvas is an easy to use, lightweight and powerful tool for anyone looking to sketch out business models. It is quickly becoming the preferred strategic management tool for start-up organizations.
While it is available in .pdf form from Alex Osterwalder’s site, I couldn’t help but feel that companies could benefit from an online, collaborative version of his template.
So, I asked him…
It only takes a Google Account, a few minutes of your spare time and best of all it’s free… [Read More]
The Evolution of Done
Posted by David Bland in agile, lean, scrum on March 11, 2010
Many of you are probably familiar with the concept of done as it relates to iterative software development. It comes in many flavors, from working lines of code to acceptance criteria, and can change from tasks to features to releases. While I agree as a community we should continually grow the definition of done, only [...]
