Applying Lean Startup Principles in Organizations of All Sizes | Hacker News Reader

Applying Lean Startup Principles in Organizations of All Sizes

ondeckdaily.com

17 pointsnickfrost6 comments

In a very similar vein, I've found the recently published book Sense & Respond to be worthwhile: https://books.google.com/books/about/Sense_and_Respond.html?...

I see a lot of people going on about the lean startup, and read a bit of it. Most of it seems like fairly common sense. And at the end of the day his product seems a bit unknown compared to his book.

I guess I am just questioning why he is regarded so highly.

The context of when the book was written has more to do with it—at a time when startups didn't have access to the great SaaS tools we have today.

Now, you can start and scale a business with just 1 or 2 people to the point of "product market fit" simply by using more specialized software. You don't have to brute force as much of the initial stage compared to the time the book was published, where "pivoting" was more uncomfortable (i.e.: sunk cost fallacy).

Somewhat agree. If you really want to understand lean principles, start with the masters of the topic and consider reading some books about Toyota. The first in the list below is a wonderful introduction to how lean manufacturing principles evolved at Toyota over decades. The others can provide more hands on experience on the topic and if you can mentally translate manufacturing principles to software construction techniques, everything will start to make sense.

The Machine that Changed the World

https://www.amazon.com/Machine-That-Changed-World-Revolution...

Toyota Production System Beyond Large Scale

https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Production-System-Beyond-Large...

The Toyota Way

https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Way-Management-Principles-Manu...

Out of the Crisis

https://www.amazon.com/Out-Crisis-W-Edwards-Deming/dp/091137...

I'm glad someone points to this. Quite often, criticism of "lean" is about stating that with a MVP you cannot make a car (with illustrations of skateboards and bicycles…)

But really, I can't see a better example for Lean than what car makers do.

I have a pretty basic understanding of Lean Startup and Lean Manufacturing, and I don't think they have too much in common besides the name.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com