Practice Trumps Theory
One of the reasons measuring “true progress” in a product is hard is because we prefer reporting good news over bad. We like charts that trend up and to the right, which isn’t all that bad by itself, until we start devising charts that can go nowhere but up and to the right.
In the Lean Startup world, we label those charts as vanity metrics.
But not all charts devised to go up and to the right are bad. Read on to learn why…
Since writing about Lean Stack (our innovation accounting framework), it has been downloaded by thousands of teams and we’ve had first-hand experience (by way of workshops and bootcamps) putting it into practice across hundreds of teams ranging from startups to large enterprises.
I hosted a Google Hangout event yesterday (video below) to share what we learned and to release the next iteration of Lean Stack which will possibly also be released as an online tool.
In a startup (or any new product) where you don’t yet know whether what you produce will generate customer value, you are better served by limiting or completely forgoing production (through an MVP or concierge MVP, for example) to first test value creation.
You have to first find a problem worth solving before committing resources to build and scale a solution. This is the essence of what I teach in my bootcamps where I have a “no code rule” and teach how to forgo such production completely until the right time. That said, while I’ve always found this logic highly rational, it’s often a hard pill to swallow for entrepreneurs because we love production and optimization of production processes.
I also couldn’t help feeling that the full impact of all that lean thinking has to offer is left deferred to latter stages when customer value production is in full tilt (after Product/Market Fit).
Then I had an mini-epiphany.
I recently caught up with Ben Yoskovitz who co-authored Lean Analytics with Alistair Croll. In today’s world where we can measure almost anything we often end up drowning in a sea of numbers. Like Ben and Alistair, I too share the general tenant around “One Metric That Matters”. The hard part is knowing which key metric to focus on.
I read a lot of books – averaging 5/month. For right or (most likely) wrong, I don’t read any fiction. I get my fiction fix through other mediums. My reading list recently has included all the new lean series of books out this year – and yes there’s a lot.
…Our inability to decide on executing one specific strategy resulted in procrastination, doing irrelevant work, or just having endless brainstorming meetings without ever taking action. I’ve come to believe, that in order to achieve flow in startup and get the business going, you need to keep the time your team spends on alternative directions to a minimum.
I love this time of the year. Everyone is upbeat around the holidays. The pace is slower. It gives me time to reflect. First, thank you all for your continued support. I’d like to share some of my biggest lessons learned in 2012.
This is a great case-study on the “big middle” by Garrett Moon, TodayMade.
I often talk about how most customer learning happens at the tail-ends of the product development cycle – while you’re gathering requirements and after you release your product. There is a “big middle” where the temptation is high for spending several weeks, months, years building and perfecting the solution. This is often where we also go astray and either build too much or build the wrong product.
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