MIT’s Entrepreneurship Center asked me to give an Agile Product Management workshop for their Hacking IAP course. The course is a special seminar in management they’re doing for MIT student entrepreneurs. It takes place over the IAP (January) term and is open to all MIT students that have startups already underway.

The first week of the course is a series of guest lectures from industry experts on how to get shit done (that’s where I come in). After that, the course serves as a mini-accelerator with students applying what they’ve learned to their startups and receiving mentoring from myself and the other lecturers. The course concludes with a demo day at the end of the term – which I can’t wait to see!

Here are my slides – I actually beefed this up a little for SlideShare, adding some bullet points for the key talking points (I know, bullet points suck – but otherwise all you have are pictures). Hope you enjoy!

I’m not a fan of New Year’s Resolutions. I believe that every day gives us the opportunity to reinvent ourselves and so it’s silly to put so much stock into that one day each year. Nonetheless, with the new year starting this weekend, I find myself longing to create more and – in the words of Seth Godin – to ship it. The more it terrifies me, the better!

And so, for those of you thinking similar thoughts, here’s a bit of inspiration that others have shipped to help us out:

Productivity Tie-Breaker: How Will You Feel Afterwards? by Mark McGuinness. Includes three things we can do to make sure 2012 is our most creative & productive year yet.

6 Steps to Building Your Creative Endurance by Jarie Bolander. Helping us get back into creative shape.

#YearInReview What did you ship in 2010? by Seth Godin. Seth Godin’s awesome post from last New Years that reminds us it’s not just about what we create but about what we actually ship.

What are YOU going to ship in 2012?

Photo Credit: Ship in a bottle by JohnLH

I always used to loathe grocery shopping. But then at some unknowable point, I actually started kind of enjoying it. Finding it a bit of an adventure, even.

And I don’t know which was the cause of which but my grocery store’s manager regularly comments on how he loves seeing me in there with my list, crossing off items. How refreshing it is so see someone in there who’s happy as opposed to all the angry, stressed out shoppers they get.

Funny, because I always thought I was one of those angry, stressed out grocery shoppers. But clearly no more.

Now I’m really embarrassed to admit it, but if I’m truly honest with myself then I have to admit I’ve got some stereotypes around people who work at grocery stores.

So last night, when I run into the manager and he mentions that he’s currently reading 3 different books, I guess I probably already have an idea in my head of what types of books he’s reading. And so, when he tells me that one’s on Relativity, one’s on String Theory, and the 3rd is on Time Travel – I’m just kind of standing there, gawking.

Read More…..

Joshua Kerievsky posted this most excellent table illustrating some of the differences between Agile and Lean Startup.

I think this is so awesome because it shows how much more real everything is in Lean Startup.

Take Velocity vs. AARRR (AARRR are Dave McClure’s startup metrics that measure things like how many people are visiting your site, buying your product, etc.). In Agile, we measure progress with Velocity, we say “how much software did we develop this week?” Lean Startup says “Who the hell cares how much software we developed this week – how many people bought our product or used our software” – you know, the things we actually care about.

Source: Industrial Logic’s BLogic