User-Driven Development & The Lean Enterprise: Uncertainty

"Unless some of you have been working in a specific domain in the last twenty years or so, the odds are anything you are thinking about customers and markets are nothing more than a guess." - The Customer Development Process, Steve Blank's video

Steve Blank, Eric Ries, Sean Ellis, and many other authors and bloggers are brilliantly teaching us how to deal with uncertainty in the business world. It is about time to take advantage of these Lean Startups techniques and learn how to apply them to the whole software development process, not only for Startups.

"Ironically, large companies'size and culture make disruptive innovation extremely difficult to execute." - Steve Blank and Bob Dorf

Steve Blank's Lean Startup Model: Not Just For Startups Any More

After experiencing so many different software development environments, from Fortune 500 to small Startups, it is clear how much one has to learn from each other.

As Agile Development drastically changed the Waterfall traditional environment, the Lean Startup concepts will also drastically change the Agile Development world, mainly for enterprises.

"(...) And some mistakes we made by the way. Some mistakes will be made along the way. That’s good because at least some decisions are being made along the way. And we’ll find the mistakes and we’ll fix them." (Steve Jobs, WWDC 1997)

3 comments:

AnonymousApril 23, 2012 at 10:14 AM
The primary difference between enterprises and startups is: Enterprises have an established, repeatable business model that has already scaled. The focus of innovation for the enterprise is to perpetuate the existing business model. Startups, by definition, have no business model. Rather, they have an innovation and are trying to find a way to consistently generate increasing revenues.

Thus, the skills and requirements for enterprises and startups are very different.
JamesOctober 6, 2015 at 12:06 PM
It will be risky to invest heavily beforehand, without having sufficient backup funds in hand, because you might not be able to start earning profits instantly, but you can’t avoid paying your employees. Moreover, don’t be overconfident and rude while dealing with the potential buyers, as it might harm your corporate image. Just avoid these mistakes when starting up a new business venture and stay protected against the unwanted financial lurches.