Practicing Lean for Startups Part I

ByMohamed Fouad El Nawawy, M.Sc.

Lean Approach

• Increased creativity of workers• Small batch sizes• Just in time production• Inventory control• Acceleration of cycle times

Feedback Loops

• New product needs optimization in development, marketing and operations

• Build-Measure-Learn: A strategy for the product to decide when to make a sharp turn (pivot) e.g. scaling and when to (persevere) along current path.

Vision

• It’s a destination of creating an innovative, sustainable business of high impact in terms of value for customer.

Validated Learning

• Empirical demonstration that a team has discovered present and future business prospects

• Quantitative targets lead to qualitative measures

• Empirically through experimentation rather than market research

Value vs. Waste

• Value is providing benefit to customer including learning what creates value for the customer otherwise is waste

• This description works on well with the concept of validated learning

• Value is acquired through discovering what customers really want not with assumptions

The Audacity of Zero

• It is easier to get funding resources when you have zero revenue due to high expectations than when you have small revenue which raises doubts

Experiments for creating value

• Guided by vision• Hypothesis about what will happen after

launching product• Testing this hypothesis empirically• Better test a prototype (quantitative testing) in

order to reach qualitative learning• If successful then project starts to grow: enlisting

early adopters, increasing number of employees

References

• Eric Ries, “The Lean Startup,” 2011