[LRUG] Building a product - all the non-development stuff

[Paul Robinson]

On 11 Dec 2012, at 13:01, James Adam <james at lazyatom.com> wrote:

> Like many of you I'm sure, in between doing client work we've been working on our own product called Harmonia (https://harmonia.io). One of our goals in doing this was to get better at all of the non-development aspects of building a product - finding new users, communicating with them, learning from how they use the app and so on. It's definitely been an interesting and challenging experience, exploring outside the comfortable world of stories and TDD.


"80% of software development is communication, only 20% of it is writing code" -- Me, my main strapline running my own consultancy for 4-5 years. :-)

I have long since realised that writing code is only a small percentage of the total valuable work we put into producing software. The majority of it - perhaps the vast majority of it - is basically a mixture of translation, prioritisation and research.

If the metaphor is building a house, we're more like the architects than we are the people who lay bricks and do the plumbing.


> I'm sure some of you have already done all this, probably several times, but we were wondering if you had any tips or advice you could share? What has worked well for you? Did you try anything that turned out to be a waste of time?



Go and get Eric Ries' book "The Lean Startup" and read it twice (if not thrice), if you haven't already. 

If you want more theoretical background, go and pick up Steve Blank's books, which is where Ries started. Really, really understand them. It is also worth possibly reading Eli Goldratt's books - particularly "It's not Luck" which applies Theory of Constrains to project management - but only if ToC is completely new to you and you want to explore the subject.

Then join this mailing list:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/lean-startup-circle

Some of the smartest Lean Entrepreneurs on the planet are on that list. It's moderately high traffic (compared to LRUG), but the SNR is relatively good.

And then - and this is the important bit - put it into practice. Start tracking the right metrics, and then just talk to your customers as much as possible, and do something with the feedback it's costing you so much to obtain. 

I like "open innovation models" like http://www.ideastorm.com/ but it depends on your customer base as to how effective that would be - in the case of Harmonia, I imagine open innovation would be a simple concept for your key customers to grasp.

Lean != Agile, and Lean is not a fad. It's been successfully used in manufacturing for nearly 50 years. In fact, parts of the concepts date back to Benjamin Franklin's writing on reducing inventory. It's worth learning.

Paul