Many people i talk make the same mistake with lean and custdev.
And i have to say i did the same mistake.
We try to things the lean way and hope therefore we do it the right way. Eg. building an MVP that should validate our business assumptions.
All of the methods around lean and custdev sound perfect in theory. But validating that you do the right thing (apart of a super obvious strong market pull) is extremely hard.
A common mistake i see is when people speak about 20 different hypotheses or experiments - and usually none of them is related to a real make-or-break risk of their company.
They try to validate that they do the right thing. Which is extremely hard.
As entrepreneurs we are in charge of a strong product/customer vision. Any method we use is only in charge to check if we are lying to ourselves.
But many of the techniques used in custdev/lean are very strong tools for minimizing the downside.
And this is (imho) where we should use them.
Our main goal is not upside optimisation (waiting for the go) but downside minimization (avoiding the no-go)
Or differently put: They are very good to double check if you aren't doing the wrong thing, if we aren't lying to ourselves.
The other main mistake i see is "trying to do it the lean way":
There is no "lean" way. Lean is a reverse engineered model largely based on survivor bias and wrong self-reflection. But that's completely ok. We must not forget how young fast-growth oriented product-centric entrepreneurship is. Even custdev which is more fullstack than lean is mostly academic and best used only as a frame of thought. Not as a blueprint model. Lean will be replaced by other models using the same or improved stack elements.
Just like me, too many people are obsessed with the theory behind lean and see it as fullstack solution.
Instead of looking at lean as a fullstack, we should pick parts of that stack that make sense for our business - as we do eg in software engineering or ux.
E.g. MVPs tend to be a problem with b2B relationships. Agency like concierge code-for-hire models tend to work better. Also customer interviews work gold for B2B - by far better than for b2c models.
Simply put: We need to pick stack elements of lean and custdev as we would pick elements of software stacks, depending on our business's risks and challenges.
Thanks for summarizing. It seems like you have a lot of useful info here and I appreciate your contribution. However, I'm really having a hard time parsing this; it seems like you're repeating the same thing several times. Any additional effort you can invest in further editing your post would be greatly appreciated!
Edit: Might look at a higher sentences-per-paragraph ratio, I think that's what's throwing me off.
And i have to say i did the same mistake.
We try to things the lean way and hope therefore we do it the right way. Eg. building an MVP that should validate our business assumptions.
All of the methods around lean and custdev sound perfect in theory. But validating that you do the right thing (apart of a super obvious strong market pull) is extremely hard.
A common mistake i see is when people speak about 20 different hypotheses or experiments - and usually none of them is related to a real make-or-break risk of their company.
They try to validate that they do the right thing. Which is extremely hard.
As entrepreneurs we are in charge of a strong product/customer vision. Any method we use is only in charge to check if we are lying to ourselves.
But many of the techniques used in custdev/lean are very strong tools for minimizing the downside.
And this is (imho) where we should use them.
Our main goal is not upside optimisation (waiting for the go) but downside minimization (avoiding the no-go)
Or differently put: They are very good to double check if you aren't doing the wrong thing, if we aren't lying to ourselves.
The other main mistake i see is "trying to do it the lean way":
There is no "lean" way. Lean is a reverse engineered model largely based on survivor bias and wrong self-reflection. But that's completely ok. We must not forget how young fast-growth oriented product-centric entrepreneurship is. Even custdev which is more fullstack than lean is mostly academic and best used only as a frame of thought. Not as a blueprint model. Lean will be replaced by other models using the same or improved stack elements.
Just like me, too many people are obsessed with the theory behind lean and see it as fullstack solution.
Instead of looking at lean as a fullstack, we should pick parts of that stack that make sense for our business - as we do eg in software engineering or ux.
E.g. MVPs tend to be a problem with b2B relationships. Agency like concierge code-for-hire models tend to work better. Also customer interviews work gold for B2B - by far better than for b2c models.
Simply put: We need to pick stack elements of lean and custdev as we would pick elements of software stacks, depending on our business's risks and challenges.
If you are interested what i mean with stack elements, take a look at - customer interviews http://www.slideshare.net/andreasklinger/actionable-customer... - metrics in early stage http://www.slideshare.net/andreasklinger/metrics-for-early-s... - jobs to be done http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6496.html - and several other aspects: http://www.hackertalks.io/robfitz/why-bother-talking-to-cust...