I recently listened to a great podcast on “Lean Startups.” I shared this podcast with my business partners, programmers and project managers because it validated my “evangelizing” for faster leaner technology projects. The podcast featuring “Lean Startups” speaks directly to how I, myself, manage technology projects from a small database driven Intranet to building a fully customized CRM system.
Over the years, I have professed to my partners, clients and colleagues the importance of making small rapid improvements to technology as compared to “making big, larger than life, massive, wait till it is perfect to launch, gut wrenching, keep me up at night worrying, break the bank, go on for years, generates more excuses than results technology projects.” The “Lean Startup” philosophy helps to minimize this risk exposure by helping an organization make smaller more rapid improvements to a system while at the same time controlling the project’s cost and scope.
Lean startup methods work because it allows users to experience rapid systematic improvements, technology advisors get faster feedback, management experiences more frequent successes, the organization can adapt faster to necessary and unforeseen budget and milestone changes while investors see faster more positive returns. At the same time, we learn whether partners and their products are the right fit sooner; that in turn offers us the ability to make the necessary changes should those partners or products not live up to our original expectations.
The hardest part of the lean startup is having to communicate to your stakeholders they must wait for the “cool, new, pie in the sky” features while we prioritize the “urgent, must have” features first to get the fastest return on investment. But that is much easier than explaining to your supervisors, board and investors why that big promising technology project has failed to materialize.
I hope you enjoy and find the podcast helpful in your next technology project.
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Video: Evangelizing for the Lean Startup. Speaker, author, and entrepreneur Eric Ries shares rapid fire wisdom on building nimble, responsive, and efficient online software-based businesses. He also offers his wisdom on streamlining processes and progressing engineering systems, and puts forth front line insight into why some new ideas succeed where others have failed.
Click here to access video from Stanford’s website. Click here to access audio only version.
