The document outlines common mistakes in lean product development for startups, emphasizing the importance of focusing on user problems, avoiding feature creep, and maintaining a clear product roadmap. It presents key principles for product management and agile MVP planning, including methods for defining user personas, prioritizing features, and measuring product success through metrics like acquisition and retention. The overall message encourages startups to apply lean principles early, focus on problem/solution fit, and iterate based on user feedback.

1. Lean product development for startups
mark geene
@mgeene

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Common MISTAKES
1. Include too many features; start new ones too soon
2. Lack timely visibility to development progress
3. Not quantitatively capturing feedback from users and
customers
4. Focused on “your solution” and not on “their problems”
5. Your development team is too optimistic leading to too
many commitments
6. Lack of a product roadmap leads to any client being a good
client
7. Chasing the competition

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LEAN Product Management PRINCIPLES
1. Build the right thing; By iterating
2. Discover problems by talking to customers
3. Determine Problem/Solution Fit with an MVP
4. More features are not the answer
5. Measure Results … AARRR

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BUILD-MEASURE-LEARN FEEDBACK LOOP*
*Lean Startup, Eric Ries

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Problem/solution fit
• Is this a problem worth solving?
• Must-Have (Is it something customers/users need?)
• Viable (Will they pay for it?)
• Feasible (Can it be solved with available resources?)
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
• Purpose is to address problem/solution fit
• Minimum set of features that a user will accept
• “Do the smallest thing possible to learn”
• Test your hypothesis, learn and iterate
Running Lean, Ash Maurya

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product/market fit
• Is this something (lots of) people want?
• How well does my product solve the problem?
• What value does it deliver over other alternatives?
• Will they pay for it?
• Qualitative Discovery
• Quantitative Discovery
Running Lean, Ash Maurya

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STARTUP METRICS FOR pirates*
• Acquisition – How do users find you?
• Activation – Do users have a great first experience?
• Retention – Do users come back?
• Referral – Do users like it enough to tell others?
• Revenue – Are users willing to pay for it?
* Dave McClure, 500 Startups

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Sleep machine example
Problem: Help people who live in noisy areas to sleep better
• 90+ Sounds Available
• Mix your own sleep tracks
• Beautiful digital clock
• Alarm with favorite songs
• Captures sleep data and analytics

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AGILE MVP PLANNING
1. Who are the users?
 Define user personas
2. What are all of the key features that I can think of?
 Identify the Epics
3. Which Epics are required for my MVP?
 Prioritize Epics
4. What do these prioritized features/epics need to do?
 Identify all of the user stories you can think of
 INVEST (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimated,
Small, Testable)
 Assign each one to an Epic or create new Epics

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AGILE MVP PLANNING
5. Is this story required to determine Problem/Solution Fit?
 MVP Test Every Story
6. How long will it take to develop my MVP
 Estimate “points” for each user story
 Estimate “capacity” for your development team
7. What should we work on next?
 Organize stories into 2-Week Sprints
 Groom each story with acceptance criteria
8. How are we doing?
 Sprint Demo Reviews after every Sprint

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AGILE MVP PLANNING
9. What if my priorities change?
 Every 2 weeks prioritize stories for the next sprint
 Take into account market feedback
10. Release, Get Feedback, Repeat

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Epics in Pivotal tracker
Hint: Once entered you can drag and drop them to prioritize.

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Stories In Pivotal tracker
Hint: Once entered you can drag and drop them to prioritize.

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Writing user stories
• As a [Persona]. I want to [capability or function],
so that [result or benefit]
• INVEST
• Independent
• Negotiable
• Valuable
• Estimated
• Small
• Testable

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Summary
• Apply Lean Product Management Principles from Day 1
• Don’t over-engineer; get to MVP in two months or less
• Manage your priorities at the Epic level downward to
focus and save time in managing your backlog
• Your priorities and plan WILL change … Embrace it

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Gary Gaessler
VP Sales & Marketing
PHONE
t 1(303) 570 0003
EMAIL
gary@cloud-elements.com
Social
@ggaessler
Contact us
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