Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works (Lean (O'Reilly)) [Tapa dura]

This book is a concise guide that helps you take immediate action in using lean startup and customer development principles. More simply, as the subtitle states, it shows you how to "Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works". The book opens with a brief chapter on the principles behind Lean Startup and Customer Development. For each chapter after that, Ash describes what you will learn, shows you clearly what you need to do, and what decisions you need to make.

The book's chapters are:

Introduction
1. Meta-Principles
2. Running Lean Illustrated
3. Create Your Lean Canvas
4. Prioritize Where to Start
5. Get Ready to Experiment
6. Get Ready to Interview Customers
7. The Problem Interview
8. The Solution Interview
9. Get to Release 1.0
10. Get Ready to Measure
11. The MVP Interview
12. Validate Customer Life Cycle
13. Don't Be a Feature Pusher
14. Measure Product/Market Fit
15. Conclusion
Appendix - Bonus Material - comments and insights on topics including: building a slow burn startup, thoughts on premature funding, achieving flow, pricing models, teaser and landing pages, sales letters, continuous deployment, conversion dashboards

Throughout the book, Ash shows when and how to use methods for activities like: business model planning, interviewing customers, setting up tests for hypotheses, pricing, determining your Minimum Viable Product (MVP), forming hypotheses and conducting tests.

The book isn't just theory. Ash moves beyond the discussion and rationale for using Lean Startup methods which Eric Ries covers in his book The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Ash uses tools, checklist, process flows, interview scripts, and visuals throughout the book to show you how to get the work done.

I've started employing pieces of this methodology in my work at a medium sized business. It is helping me lower risks for projects I manage, and also helps me get to solid solutions and products more quickly, and at lower costs.

If you want a book that will help you get to work NOW on using Lean Startup and Customer Development methods, this is it. Grab this book, and get moving!

This is one of the essential books for lean startup practitioners. It isn't theory. You can tell these are real lessons from Ash's own experience running lean startups. This book is very prescriptive; telling you specific things to accomplish. The one thing I found really valuable was the focus on how to map out your startup using the one page "lean canvas". After reading this book, I really got it and elevated my lean startup game.

Running Lean is the best book out there for entrepreneurs that want to launch their startups using customer development and lean startup. Clear, to the point and practical, it is full of gold and no BS. The structure of the book and its real life examples make it really easy to implement in no time. If you want to DO this is your book, and you will also learn something along the way, a lot more than with other books that talk a lot of theory and are more oriented to the corporate boardroom.

I really enjoyed reading it and using it to build a new project.