The Lean Start-up methodology describes how you plan, when and how to control – while most importantly – how to apply maximum acceleration, either to your product or business.

Like most business, they start backwards by first developing a new product/service on the assumption that it is what their potential customers want.

Not So.

You should start by first establishing that a ready market already exists and then spent large amounts of time and money developing the product. Okay, but there is an even better way…

What if they communicated to prospective customers first and determined whether or not their product/service could be of value to their customers?

Eliminate as much risk as possible

Out of frustration, or the need just to take action, product developers (or rather their management), take a "just do it" approach – but this is not the only option open to them.

I am talking about The Lean Startup of course!

Lean provides tools, continuous testing, reduces development costs, helps in failing fast and failing cheap, but that’s not all, Lean will wrap a process and a method around new product development.

What is the Lean methodology?

Initially, the Lean movement started in Japan in the 1950s in the automotive industry and was mainly aimed at loss reduction and sustainable production.

Following the trend that Lean could be extended to any industry, Lean was applied in the startup industry in 2008 by Eric Ries as a way of developing “new products and services in circumstances of extreme uncertainty.”

To be considered “Lean,” a startup should follow the values of 5 Lean principles:

Entrepreneurship is management

A typical Lean company follows a learn – measure – build cycle, and conducts many tests, frequently connects with customers, understands their value, and focuses its key processes to continuously improve it.

A never-ending cycle leads the startup to sustainability, smart development, and success.

While reducing the high costs of getting the first customer and even higher cost of getting the product wrong and shortening technology development cycles, Lean Startup philosophy helps new ventures launch products that customers want, far more quickly and cheaper than traditional methods, making start-ups less risky.

Should This Product Be Built?

The wrong question to ask is "Can this product be built?" rather than "Should this product be built?" and vitally, "Will this product/service provide a sustainable business?"

Lean also provides the product developer with a “beta” release.

Early adopters can be enlisted, and by the time that product is ready for wider distribution, you will have an initial customers database, you will know what problems have been resolved and you have refined your knowledge of a typical customers real and detailed specifications.

Developing Your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

A core component of Lean Startup methodology is the build-measure-learn feedback loop.

The first step is determining the problem that needs to be solved and then developing a minimum viable product (MVP) so that the process of learning as quickly as possible.

Once the MVP is established, you need to establish and demonstrate cause and effect.
Here, you can use an investigative development method called the "Five Whys" by asking simple questions to study and solve problems along the way.

Lean Philosophy

To develop products/services you will want to eliminate anything that doesn’t bring value to the customer. Lean started from traditional manufacturing and expanded to all existing industries, and uses the action loop build-measure-learn.

Progress in manufacturing is measured by the production of high quality goods. The objective here is to focus on determining the product/service customers want and will pay for

A start-up's most important function is learning – in particular, learning what the customers really want and what will lead to a sustainable business

There are two critical hypotheses:

Value hypothesis: What your users want. does the customer have the problem you’re trying to solve? Does the product deliver value to the customer?

Growth hypothesis: How your start-up will grow how will the company grow once people start using the product?

The first step of Build-Measure-Learn is to build something. But what do you build? What should your prototype be?
You need to answer the questions:

Next, you build the MINIMAL product necessary to test the hypothesis. This is the BUILD step of the Build-Measure-Learn loop

Next, you run the experiment. This means showing users the product and collecting data on their behavior. This is the MEASURE step of Build-Measure-Learn

The faster you move through this Build-Measure-Learn loop, the faster you’ll learn, and the more progress you’ll make. Imagine how much you’d learn from 8 steadily improving prototypes verses 1 huge, fully-featured prototype

What’s the difference between Agile and Lean?

Both Agile and Lean are aimed at achieving business goals and delighting clients with a competitive product of the best quality. These and many other shared features between the two mindsets often lead to people mixing them up.

However, they serve different purposes and tasks, and that is why it’s important to draw a clear line between them.

The term Lean is wider than Agile because its smart approach influences all types of losses (not only time loss) such as money, labor, energy, etc. Agile was born after Lean, so they are closely related.

Lean, Agile, Scrum, Sprint, Kanban

Consider Lean and Agile as pretty much the same thing, they are basically good approaches to handling projects with a lot of uncertainties, which is why successful start-ups take this approach.

Scrum and Kanban are two of the most popular Agile project management frameworks. They differ quite a bit — Scrum seems to be more often used and pure Kanban less used.

Typically, everyone uses their own tailored or blended version of Scrum, which is encouraged, often taking in elements of Kanban. Sprint is a Scrum terminology.

It’s the iteration cycle in Scrum.

Why Lean & Agile?

Because in this changing world of social and digital engagement, we need a better way of doing business and managing organizations.
Lean and Agile are antidotes to the two main causes of dysfunction in modern organizations:

      1.  Waterfall project management, and
      2.  Functional hierarchical organization structures.

The Spirit of Lean and Agile

Lean, Agile and Scrum are approaches, not methodologies.
The reason for this is because there is no ONE methodology that works for problem solving against ALL uncertainties.

Rather than a methodology, you follow certain common principles:

The Kanban Method

The Kanban Method is a means to design, manage, and improve flow systems for knowledge work, while allowing organizations to start with their existing workflow and drive evolutionary change, and this is done by visualizing the flow of work, limit work in progress (WIP) and stop starting and start finishing

Kanban is defined as – visual signalling mechanisms to control work in progress for intangible work products

The Kanban Method reflects that work flows continuously through the system instead of being organized into distinct timeboxes

How is Kanban different from Scrum?

Kanban can be used in any knowledge work setting, and is particularly applicable in situations where work arrives in an unpredictable fashion and/or when you want to deploy work as soon as it is ready, rather than waiting for other work items.

Kanban is structured to address the human tendency to resist change - here is the approach:

Kanban’s Service Delivery Principles

The Kanban Lifecycle

Work items flow through a Kanban system in single piece flow, so each system is different with respect to stages in its workflow
It is best to describe the Kanban method lifecycle is via the feedback loops which are:

Strategy Review (Quarterly)
Select the services to provide and the
context in which those services are appropriate

Operations Review (Monthly)
Understand the balance between and across services, including deploying people and resources to maximize value delivery

Risk Review (Monthly)
Understand and respond to delivery risks in services

Service Delivery Review (Bi-Weekly)
Examine and improve the effectiveness of a service - a retrospective that is focused on improving the Kanban system

Replenishment Meeting (Weekly)
Identify items that the team will work on and determine which work items may be selected next. This is analogous to a planning meeting for a sprint or iteration

The Kanban Meeting (Daily)
A team working on a service coordinates their activities for the day. This is analogous to a daily stand-up

Delivery Planning Meeting (Per Delivery Stage)
Monitor and plan deliveries to customers