Running Lean

Offers a systematic approach to product/market fit, discussing customer involvment, optimal time to obtain funding, and when to change the plan.

Is your “big idea” worth pursuing? What if you could test your business model earlier in the process—before you’ve expended valuable time and resources? You’ve talked to customers. You’ve identified problems that need solving, and maybe even built a minimum viable product. But now there’s a second bridge to cross. How do you tell whether your idea represents a viable business? Do you really have to go through the whole cycle of development, failure, iteration, tweak, repeat? Scaling Lean offers an invaluable blueprint for mod­eling startup success. You’ll learn the essential metrics that measure the output of a working business model, give you the pulse of your company, communicate its health to investors, and enable you to make precise interventions when things go wrong. You’ll also learn how to: · ballpark the viability of a business model using a simple five-minute back-of-the-envelope estimation. · stop using current revenue as a measure of progress (it forces you to fly blind and, often, to overpromise to your shareholders) and instead embrace the met­ric of traction—which helps you identify the leading indicators for future business model growth. · set progressive goals that set you up for exponen­tial long-term success by implementing a staged 10X rollout strategy, like one employed by Face­book and Tesla. · stop burying your breakthrough insights in failed experiments, but rather illuminate them using two-week LEAN sprints to quickly source, rank, and test ideas. Ash Maurya, a serial entrepreneur and author of the startup cult classic Running Lean, pairs real-world examples of startups like Airbnb and Hubspot with techniques from the manufacturing world in this tacti­cal handbook for scaling with maximum efficiency and efficacy. This is vital reading for any startup founder graduating from the incubator stage.

Equilibrium. That's what Stacey and Calvin found in each other. He is as solid as his beloved vintage motorcycle and helps quiet the constant clamor in Stacey's mind. She is a passionate, creative spirit--and a lifeline after Calvin's soldier brother dies. But lately the balance is off. Calvin's grief is taking new forms. Voices of self-loathing are dominating Stacey's life. When struggles with body image threaten her health, Calvin can't bear to lose another person that he loves. Taking action may destroy their relationship, but the alternative could be much more costly.

The missing manual on how to apply Lean Startup to build products that customers love The Lean Product Playbook is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice. The Lean Startup movement has contributed new and valuable ideas about product development and has generated lots of excitement. However, many companies have yet to successfully adopt Lean thinking. Despite their enthusiasm and familiarity with the high-level concepts, many teams run into challenges trying to adopt Lean because they feel like they lack specific guidance on what exactly they should be doing. If you are interested in Lean Startup principles and want to apply them to develop winning products, this book is for you. This book describes the Lean Product Process: a repeatable, easy-to-follow methodology for iterating your way to product-market fit. It walks you through how to: Determine your target customers Identify underserved customer needs Create a winning product strategy Decide on your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Design your MVP prototype Test your MVP with customers Iterate rapidly to achieve product-market fit This book was written by entrepreneur and Lean product expert Dan Olsen whose experience spans product management, UX design, coding, analytics, and marketing across a variety of products. As a hands-on consultant, he refined and applied the advice in this book as he helped many companies improve their product process and build great products. His clients include Facebook, Box, Hightail, Epocrates, and Medallia. Entrepreneurs, executives, product managers, designers, developers, marketers, analysts and anyone who is passionate about building great products will find The Lean Product Playbook an indispensable, hands-on resource.

Racing Weight is a proven weight-management program designed specifically for endurance athletes. Revealing new research and drawing from the best practices of elite athletes, coach and nutritionist Matt Fitzgerald lays out six easy steps to help cyclists, triathletes, and runners lose weight without harming their training. This comprehensive and science-based program shows athletes the best ways to lose weight and avoid the common lifestyle and training hang-ups that keep new PRs out of reach. The updated Racing Weight program helps athletes: Improve diet quality Manage appetite Balance energy sources Easily monitor weight and performance Time nutrition throughout the day Train to getand staylean Racing Weight offers practical tools to make weight management easy. Fitzgerald’s no-nonsense Diet Quality Score improves diet without counting calories. Racing Weight superfoods are diet foods high in the nutrients athletes need for training. Supplemental strength training workouts can accelerate changes in body composition. Daily food diaries from 18 pro athletes reveal how the elites maintain an athletic diet while managing appetite. Athletes know that every extra pound wastes energy and hurts performance. With Racing Weight, cyclists, triathletes, and runners have a simple program and practical tools to hit their target numbers on both the race course and the scale.

UX design has traditionally been deliverables-based. Wireframes, site maps, flow diagrams, content inventories, taxonomies, mockups helped define the practice in its infancy.Over time, however, this deliverables-heavy process has put UX designers in the deliverables business. Many are now measured and compensated for the depth and breadth of their deliverables instead of the quality and success of the experiences they design. Designers have become documentation subject matter experts, known for the quality of the documents they create instead of the end-state experiences being designed and developed.So what's to be done? This practical book provides a roadmap and set of practices and principles that will help you keep your focus on the the experience back, rather than the deliverables. Get a tactical understanding of how to successfully integrate Lean and UX/Design; Find new material on business modeling and outcomes to help teams work more strategically; Delve into the new chapter on experiment design and Take advantage of updated examples and case studies.

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

Today's customers want it all and they want it now: innovation, speed, agility, and value. How can you drive operational excellence, stimulate growth, and accelerate idea-to-value innovation throughout your enterprise? Shingo Prize-winning author Steve Bell, joined by other thought leaders, offers useful insights and examples you can start using now. Run Grow Transform takes the next logical step to driving enterprise value. This could be the game-changing playbook for IT 3.0. -Mark Katz, CIO & Senior Vice President, Esselte Corporation A powerful read detailing how companies can leverage their Lean IT transformation to supercharge the business. -Tom Paider, IT Build Capability Leader, Nationwide The consistent application of the practices described in this book has enabled Embraer to reap huge gains. I recommend this book as a desktop companion. -Alexandre Baule, Vice President Information Systems, Embraer Run Grow Transform takes the reader a leap forward, ready for immediate application to bridge Lean and innovation. -Melissa Barrett, Enterprise Architecture & IT Strategy, Premera Blue Cross This book focuses on the most critical and challenging issue for any aspect of the development or use of IT: creating a collaborative learning culture. -Jeffrey K. Liker, Shingo Prize-Winning Author of The Toyota Way Run Grow Transform sets out the principles and practices necessary for success in the new economy. -Jez Humble, author of Continuous Delivery Steve Bell has hit another home run with this book. Either your organization will adopt the wisdom contained in this book and thrive, or your competitors will do so and put you out of business. -Scott Ambler, author Disciplined Agile Delivery and 19 other books It's rare to see truly new insight added to the Lean discussion. Steve Bell does just that by continuing to push the frontiers of Lean thinking. -Alexander Brown, COO, Scrum Inc. A powerful read detailing how companies can leverage their Lean IT transformation to supercharge the business. -Tom Paider, IT Build Capability Leader, Nationwide Steve Bell has mapped a new trajectory. I challenge any CIO to read Bell's breakthrough work and not be compelled to start this journey to become a transformative leader in the creation of real and sustainable value. -Jeffrey Barnes, Society for Information Management (SIM), Regional Director, Advanced Practices Council All too often the IT organization is viewed as an impediment to lean transformation, when it truly can be a catalyst. Steve's book sorts out all the noise, the jargon, and the "hero culture", guiding the reader to what is so obvious, yet so hard to see: build your culture around your customer! -Josh Rapoza, Director of Web Strategy and Operations, Lean Enterprise Institute Aligning Lean and IT is a great challenge with a big payoff. This book really shows how Lean and IT can create a strong enterprise; it's a great inspiration. -Klaus Lyck Petersen, Solar A/S A must read for any organization that is pursuing continuous improvement. In today's world, real business improvement cannot be achieved without the IT factor; this book will help any organization achieve the improvement that they are seeking. -Barry J. Brunetto, Vice President, Information Systems, Blount International Precise, concise, and entertaining, this book provides the reader with crucial tips on how IT can help enterprises survive and thrive in a fast-paced technological and economic environment. This is mandatory reading not only for businesses and IT organizations, but also for universities and policy makers. -Fuat Alican, PhD, Vice President, Central American Scientific Research and Education Center Not just for Lean Practitioners, Run Grow Transform is a must-have reference for any IT organization, regardless of size, age or industry, looking to move to the next level of performance. -Sarah Topham, Lean Deployment Leader, Information Technology & Product Management, Paychex, Inc. This is a long overdue book that addresses the key challenges for today's IT organization and puts Lean IT into a context that is too often lacking. -James Finister, Tata Consultancy Services The 'business as usual' scenario is not an option in today's economy and global challenges. A transformation in methods, tools and frameworks is needed to guide our business decisions. This book is your first step! -Khuloud Odeh, IT Director, Grameen Foundation Delivering beyond the helpful folk wisdom and narrow techniques and technologies found elsewhere, Steve Bell and his contributors provide practical full value stream lifecycle methods for continuous improvement using Lean in an IT and customer (business) setting. -Martin Erb, Director of Professional Services, Pink Elephant Run Grow Transform clarifies the eternal quest of IT: to simply "running" of the business and to create innovative solutions to grow the business and create sustainable competitive advantage to transform the way customers interact with your business, in plain, actionable advice from one who has been on the front lines. -Tom Foco, Value Stream Solution