2. The Lean iStartup
Agile Intrapreneur @CU
Alex Viggio @aviggio
• 1st product sold ’85 *paid for Macintosh 512k
• B.S. IBM PC “U” ’94 *C/C++, OS/2, Waterfall
• 1st startup sold ’95 *paid for new life in Boulder
• Founded XP Denver ’00 *pivot ↪ Agile Denver
• 1st Lean iStartup ’09 *several startups later
• M.S. ICTD CU-Boulder *startup grad program
I graduated in ’94 from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL which was heavily influenced at the time by being home to IBM and it’s Project Chess legacy. I meant to
share this anecdote in my talk, but didn’t.
The Project Chess team of twelve directed by Don Estridge and Chief Designer Lewis Eggebrecht was responsible for one of IBM’s most successful MVPs, the original IBM
PC which they launched in August 1981. This in many ways also gave Microsoft their most critical launch pad, resulting in the industry leader we know today. IBM first
contacted Microsoft in July 1980, contracts were signed in early November, they had their 86-DOS running on a prototype PC in February 1981, and was ready for the PC’s
release date in August.
Rather than going through the usual IBM design process, the Project Chess team had authorization to bypass normal company restrictions and get something to market
rapidly. The team developed the PC in about a year (verus 4+ for most IBM projects) by building it with "off-the-shelf" parts and software from a variety of OEMs. Previously
IBM had always developed its own hardware and software components.
Once it became a commercial success, the product came back under the more usual tight IBM management control. IBM's tradition of "rationalizing" product lines, deliberately
restricting the performance of lower-priced models in order to prevent them from "cannibalizing" profits from higher-priced models, worked against them and they no longer
produce or sell personal computers or laptops having sold to Lenovo in 2005.
Somewhat ironically, in 1999 Don Estridge was identified in CIO magazine as one of the people who "invented the enterprise", when in fact he might have been one of the
leading intrapreneurs of the ‘80s.
*most of the above text is copied from Wikipedia
3. The Lean iStartup
Agile Intrapreneur @CU
FIS 1.0: 1994-2009
• CU’s Faculty Information System
(FIS) originally developed ’94
• 1990s Oracle Database technology
• Microsoft Access 97 and PL/SQL Web
1.0 clients
4. The Lean iStartup
Agile Intrapreneur @CU
FIS 1.1: 2010
• Migration from OIT Enterprise legacy
database Solaris server and Oracle 9i
• Stabilization: new OIT Managed
Services database and web Linux
servers and latest Oracle 11g R2
• Adopting Agile and Scrum *2 week sprints
• Adding new features!?$# *still not Lean
5. The Lean iStartup
Agile Intrapreneur @CU
FIS 2.0: 2011
• Web 2.0 and 3.0 *HTML5, Javascript, RDF
• Using Open Source *Linux, VIVO, jQuery, Selenium
• Pivot ↪ Lean iStartup *2 MVPs, Lean methods
6. The Lean iStartup
Agile Intrapreneur @CU
MVP: VIVO CUB
• http://vivo.colorado.edu/ *campus only
• Pivot ↪ CU Faculty Research Index
• Conditions of extreme uncertainty?
• http://vivo.cornell.edu/
• 15+ years faculty data ⊋ Public Web
• No NIH funding *$12M > $0
7. The Lean iStartup
Agile Intrapreneur @CU
MVP: VIVO CUB
• Demoing VIVO MVP in a VM with real
FIS data on my laptop late ’10
• Dev starts VIVO CU-Boulder 01/11
• Release of VIVO CU-Boulder 04/11
• CU-Boulder case study in upcoming
Morgan & Claypool Synthesis book
8. The Lean iStartup
Agile Intrapreneur @CU
MVP: UCCS FRPA
• https://fis.uccs.edu
• The Original Pitch fails to launch
• Pivot ↪ FIS 2.0 can wait
• Dev starts UCCS FRPA Fall ’11
• 1st MVP Launch: UCCS FRPA 01/12
• 1st Paying Customer!
9. The Lean iStartup
Agile Intrapreneur @CU
MVP Tech Concerns
• XP and Agile/Lean focus on baking in
and maintaining quality
• MVP quality trade offs *aka “can’t define quality
until you know customer”
• Avoid vanity metrics *LOC, bug fixes
