manage risks Archives ~ Launch Tomorrow

The Best Lean Startup Tool In My Experience

June 22, 2014 by LaunchTomorrow

none of these will work: you need a “thinking” tool

There’s a specific agile tool which I think every early-stage product team should use, regardless of whether they’re following the Lean Startup methodology. Lean Startup drew its roots from agile software development. Eric Reis added Steve Blank’s idea of customer development to agile. Assuming we aren’t talking about re-reading Eric Reis’ book for the 17th time, the best Lean Startup tool is the dogeared post-it.

That’s it.

What? Why not some kind of fancy-shmancy online tool that defines, builds, and releases your product? In your sleep. There’s lots of those around. < grin >

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Managing Risk the Agile Way: Like a Hedge Fund

August 7, 2013 by LaunchTomorrow

Manage risk. Despite having backlogs, Agile doesn’t manage risks–explicitly. In 2007, Paul Kedrosky noticed a rather peculiar ratio. The ratio of software developers to non-developers at a major quant fund versus a major software company:

Oracle (56,000 empl.) — 1:8 (one developer for every eight employees)
Renaissance Technologies (178 empl.) — 2:3 (two developers for every 3 employees)

It’s not too much of a stretch to say that hedge funds are a new type of Software Company. After all, they have more developers per capita than the latter, and they generate more cash flow per capita, if they are any good. Hedge funds also provide a fantastic template for how software companies and projects could be run. Risk management separates the men from the boys. Well-run hedge funds make financial decisions quickly, consistently with the spirit of the agile manifesto. They cannot afford to let any bureaucracy get in the way of “high gamma” execution.