The document compares traditional, waterfall, agile, and lean startup product development methods. Traditional waterfall development has known problems and solutions and progresses through stages. Agile methods have working code as the unit of progress and an unknown problem but known solution, while agile XP adds a product owner. Lean startup tightly couples business, marketing, and engineering in customer feedback loops, with customer validation as progress and hypotheses, experiments, and insights driving unknown problems and solutions.

1. Traditional Product Development
Unit of progress: Advance to Next Stage
Waterfall
Problem: known Solution: known

2. Agile
Unit of progress: a line of working code
Agile (XP)
“Product Owner” or
in-house customer
Solution: unknown
Problem: known

3. Product Development at Lean Startup
Business, marketing, engineering are tightly coupled in a company-
wide feedback loop.
Unit of progress: customer validation
Data, feedback, insights
Hypotheses, experiments, insights
Problem: unknown Solution: unknown

4. Customer Development
Continuous cycle of customer

interaction
Rapid hypothesis

testing about market,
pricing, customers, …
Extreme low cost, low

burn, tight focus
Measurable gates for

investors
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