Lean Teams
Doing more with less
Marty Haught
@mghaught
http://martyhaught.com

Got Sugar Daddy?

Got Ramen?

Rockin with Ramen
(pictured with Dokken)

Boulder Ruby
Longmont, Colorado

Entrepreneurship

...but
• need to pay the bills (still consulting)
• want to make progress with little effort
• so I started to learn about the strange, new
world

Guiding Principles
1. Focus on Value
2. Minimize Effort
3. Deliver Fast

1. Focus on Value
“First, learn what is core to what
you are building then provide just
that”

Add Nothing but Value
what is value? understand it
should be owned by everyone

Feedback Driven Development
• creating useful software that people value
• learning what reaches users
• process for validating change
• doing so with as little effort

Customer
Development

Customer
Development
• reducing market risk
• what problem are you solving?
• who are your customers?
• will they pay for it?

Ice Cream Glove

Don’t drink your Kool-
Aid

Feedback Loop
via Eric Ries

Pivot
• tweak features to get better results
• if pivoting doesn’t work, remove

2. Minimize Effort

Simplicity
• strip features to the essence that achieves
value
• spiking large features
• “Do the simplest thing that could possibly
work”

Simplify Game

Delay Commitment
• pushing off decisions, commitment until the
last possible moment
• yagni - you ain’t going to need it

Minimum Viable
Product
• Rails Rumble/Startup Weekend
• starting place for validated learning with the
least effort
• should be embarrassing
• early adopters see the potential

3. Deliver Fast

Kanban
• a pull-based system for continuous flow of work
• project management tool
• expression of just in time
• emphasis on flow

Kanban Benefits
• simple, less process
• limit work in progress, maximize
throughput
• easy to change direction
• less inventory of requirements/stories
• less time in meetings
• more easily spot bottlenecks

Continuous Deployment
• automated deployment of completed code
to production
• ship features when ready

Commit
Monitor Test
Deploy

Details
• automated testing with continuous
integration
• simple deployment/rollback script
• ‘stop the line’ on failures
• real time alerts in production
• five whys - root cause analysis

Benefits
• deliver features/bugs fixes faster
• reduce shelf time for finished work
• eliminate waste in deployment process
• find integration issues quicker and in
isolation

Takeaway
• don’t waste resources on stuff that doesn’t
matter
• pivot as you learn from your users
• focus on flow
• ship when features are ready

Go Forth and Rock!

Learn More
• Eric Ries - www.startuplessonslearned.com
• Steve Blank - The Four Steps to the Epiphany
• Mary Poppendieck - Lean Software Development
• Kanban - www.limitedwipsociety.org

Questions? Mahalo
Marty Haught
@mghaught
mghaught@gmail.com
http://martyhaught.com http://haughtcodeworks.com
Image credits
Pile of Money - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ironrodart/3841677517/
Bowl of Ramen - http://www.flickr.com/photos/billselak/2388252659/
George Lynch - http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/dokken/photos/collection/photo/1
Long's Peak - http://www.flickr.com/photos/17972620@N00/2956076614/
Red Pill - http://www.flickr.com/photos/14322461@N04/1952594994/
Gold Heart - http://www.flickr.com/photos/cryodigital/3060730616/
Kool-Aid - http://www.flickr.com/photos/dyannafstop/2025899850/
Hammock - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wisdoc/3212710310/
Running Dog - http://www.flickr.com/photos/wisdoc/123640339/
Randy Rhoads - www.rudysarzo.com/images/bio/Randy-Rhoads.jpg