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!

Scrum

A lot of people tend to think Agile means Scrum – you know how it goes:

And I think there’s a lot of goodness in Scrum. It provides clear structure for what the team needs to do (the Sprint Backlog), gives them focus for getting it done (backlogs are fixed for the duration of the sprint), and then enables the team to determine the best methods for getting that work done. It even provides them a coach (ScrumMaster) who’s job it is to make sure they have what they need and to get impediments out of their way.

I love it’s feedback loops for constantly checking in, making sure we’re on track and – when we find we’re not – adapting as needed: Daily quick (15 minutes max!) meetings for the team to sync up, customer demos each sprint, regular team retrospectives. As Ken Schwaber says, software is too complex to completely avoid failure and why would we want to anyway since failure is how we learn!  Instead, what we need is a framework that enables us to identify failures as quickly as possible so that we can learn from them and adapt accordingly (see: Framework for Finding Failure).

The Problem with Scrum’s Time-boxed Sprint Lengths

The thing I’ve grown to dislike about Scrum are it’s time-boxed sprints.

Working with startups, Scrum sprints are almost always way too long. When your sprints are too long then releases are infrequent (deferring revenue) and the team is forced to wait too long before being able to adapt to changing customer needs. This is wasteful because it means you’re continuing to move forward with outdated information.

On the other hand, if sprints are too short, big features need to be arbitrarily chunked into smaller tasks, which aren’t useful to the customer on their own & can obfuscate what the team is trying to achieve (see: Kanban Development Oversimplified).

I recognize the advantage to Scrum’s set-lengthed sprints was to provide predictability. If we work in consistently-lengthed sprints then we can define our team’s velocity to predict how many stories we can deliver each sprint. Or, as is the norm with Scrum, we can say, “on X release date we’ll deliver this long list of features.”

But, I believe that for the same reason two weeks is suddenly too long, this predictability isn’t realistic anymore. The faster technology improves in allowing us to quickly build & demo features, the faster it enables the customer to change their thinking, the faster it enables us learn and adapt, the faster things are changing. And we can either respond to those changes by truly adapting the software into the right solution. Or we can blindly ignore this information and stubbornly continue marching down the not-quite-right-path because our sprint hasn’t ended yet.

Kanban

Kanban addresses these challenges with a different approach to scheduling. Rather than working in time-boxed sprints (Kanban has no sprints), Kanban puts limits on how many features a team can work on at a given time.

As soon as a feature is completed – two things happen:

1) The feature is available for immediate release into production (should the team wish to do so)
2) The team can start working on whatever the next highest priority item is. Even if that item was just learned today!

Below is an example of a Kanban board, which is used to visually track the status of each feature:

Each column represents the state of the feature, and under each column – in red – is the maximum number of features that are allowed to exist in that state at any given time. The columns can be named whatever makes sense for the team, but you’ll typically have a To Do column with the next features to work on. Next, you’ll have 1 or more columns to represent the work that’s In Progress (here, we have Development, Test & Release). And finally a Done column.

You don’t want to go too crazy on the # of columns else you’ll hit inefficiencies from that as well, but separating the work into a few different states reaps yet more advantages from Kanban:

1) You can specify different workload capacities for different disciplines based on your team’s capabilities

2) You get a visual, real-time status of your team’s workflow so you can be continually optimizing your process as well as eliminating bottlenecks (or other problems) as they occur (before they have a chance to compound).

The result is more feedback with the ability to adapt to that feedback faster.

Evolving Practices

I still believe Scrum contains excellent ideas – like self-organizing teams & continual feedback – that we shouldn’t just throw out with the bathwater. But, these same ideas continue to work with Kanban’s scheduling (see Kanban and Scrum).

And so, I believe the evolution of agile – as has always been the case with agile methodologies – is pulling from those practices that make the most sense. Kanban for scheduling, Scrum for self-organizing & feedback loops, and XP (with some of the new practices from Lean Startup!) for technical practices.

Photo Credits: Scrum Process by Mountain Goat Software, Kanban: Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both by Henrik Kniberg and Mattias Skarin

Been getting a lot of questions lately, so thought I’d take a stab at this…

Lean

Lean comes from Lean Manufacturing and is a set of principles for achieving quality, speed & customer alignment (same as what we’re trying to do with agile development, right?).

Mary & Tom Poppendieck adapted the principles from Lean Manufacturing to fit software development and I believe these ideas actually provide the premises behind why agile works:

1. Eliminate Waste	5. Deliver Fast
2. Build Quality In	6. Respect People
3. Create Knowledge	7. Optimize the Whole
4. Defer Commitment

In a nutshell, Lean says to relentlessly eliminate anything that isn’t adding value and only work on what we absolutely need to be doing at this moment in time. Eliminating waste means eliminating useless meetings, tasks and documentation. But it also means eliminating time spent building what "we know” we’ll need in the future (things are constantly changing so we often end up not needing them – or if we do, we have to rework them because conditions and our understanding has changed by then). It also means eliminating inefficient ways of working – like multitasking (!) – so we can deliver fast.

Lean also puts a very strong emphasis on what it calls “the system” – that is, the way that the team operates as a whole. We always need to be looking at our work from a top level to ensure we’re optimizing for the whole. For example, many managers want to “optimize” individual developers by ensuring they’re always at 100% – but most of the time, this is actually counter-productive. Let’s not have people coding something that isn’t needed (or fully defined yet) just for the sake of coding, because that actually creates more work for us in the future (see: Why You Should Let Your Developers Surf).

Along those lines, Lean says to respect that the people doing the work are the ones that best know how to do it. Give them what they need to be effective and then trust them to do it. Software development is about learning, so structure the work to ensure we’re continuously learning. And because of that, defer decisions until the last responsible moment (because we’ll know more by then). Finally, develop in a way that builds quality into our product, because there’s no way to continuously deliver fast if we have to keep going back to clean up our messes.

“Organizations that are truly lean have a strong competitive advantage because they respond very rapidly and in a highly disciplined manner to market demand, rather than try to predict the future.” – Mary Poppendieck

Agile

Agile refers to a set of values and principles put forth in the Agile Manifesto. The Manifesto was a reaction against heavyweight methodologies that were popular, yet crippling software projects from actually doing what they needed to do – create software that helped the customer! I believe Agile’s values & principles work because of the science behind Lean and so you’ll see a lot of similar themes repeated in agile.

The Agile Manifesto’s values are:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

And it’s principles are:

1. Highest priority is customer satisfaction	7. Progress measured by working software
2. Welcome changing requirements	8. Sustainable development pace
3. Frequent delivery of software	9. Continuous attention to technical excellence
4. Business people & developers cooperating daily	10. Simplicity
5. Build projects around motivated people	11. Self-organizing teams
6. Face-to-face conversation is best	12. Regular reflection & adaptation

Any project that follows these values and principles can rightly be considered to be agile. That said, there are definitely preferred practices that are common for agile teams to follow in order to achieve agility. Most commonly:

• Scrum or Kanban (or a hybrid of the two) for “Management Practices”
• Extreme Programming (XP) for Technical Practices (with new practices becoming popular, largely from Lean Startup – such as Continuous Deployment and Testing in Production)

A good agile team picks and choses the management & technical practices that best work for them. (a bad one just picks a couple of practices and falsely believes that somehow “makes them agile” – see: Are We Agile Yet?).

In Part II, I’ll post summaries of these agile methods and practices.

Photocredits: Contortionist by Amber Kenneson

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

For background – I had 11 domains pointing to two different hosting providers and forwarding to a few different URLs. Some were paid out through as far as 2017. I was really worried about losing things I’d already paid for (I didn’t) and having this be a huge hassle (it really wasn’t and it was all transferred in under 30 minutes).

After being recommended to Hover, I first checked their twitter to find this:

and then their website, which says “Transfer your domain to Hover for only $10. Includes 1 year registration.”

[Update: I hear they now have a coupon code “SOPA” that gives you 10% off]

When you click the link, you’re given a 1-800 # which, when you call, is answered up by a human being who will then walk you through transferring your domains (or you can do it yourself – but I appreciated the help!)

A few things to know when you transfer your domain to a new registrar:

1. The domain still remains registered for as long as you’ve already paid (you don’t lose that).

2. The name server records you already have set up (e.g., to point to your hoster) stay the same (you don’t lose that and shouldn’t experience any downtime from the transfer).

3. If you have GoDaddy.com providing services for you – such as forwarding, hosting or email, then you will need to re-set these up at your new registrar and you can have some downtime, depending on how you do it.

• If you transfer your domain first and then set up the services with the new registrar after, you will experience some downtime (from a few minutes up to a day) as the name server changes (from GoDaddy.com to your new registrar) propagate over the Internet. For me, it seemed to propagate in < 1 hour, but your mileage may vary. If this is an issue, I’d talk to the new registrar and see if they can set things up before the transfer so you don’t have any downtime.  Again, this is ONLY for the domains which GoDaddy is providing services for – not for domains you have hosted elsewhere.

   

• Remember to check your domain’s settings on GoDaddy before you initiate the transfer to make sure you have the information you need because these settings are all wiped as soon as the transfer goes through.

4. To do the transfer, you need to first unlock your domain on GoDaddy and then have GoDaddy email you the Authorization Code. You’ll need this code to transfer to your new registrar.

I can’t speak to other registrars, but in the case of Hover, the $10/domain I paid not only transferred the domain but also extended my existing registration by 1 year. So, yes, I had to pay $110 ($10 * 11 domains) and that sucked because I’m pretty broke right now – but it’s money I most likely would have been spending anyway in the future to renew the registrations and SOPA sucks, so it’s worth a few nights of ramen.

Hover has a tutorial on how to do all of this – I didn’t use it, I just called them and they walked me through it, but if you want to do it yourself, you can see the tutorial here: http://help.hover.com/tutorials/hover/manual/927/7788-godaddy-complete-tutorial/

I know I sound like an advertisement for Hover – I honestly have no knowledge of them beyond what I just shared. But I will say that even within the first 30 minutes of working with them, it’s immediately obvious just how much better they are than GoDaddy, and from talking to others the general consensus is that pretty much everyone is way better than GoDaddy.

So, fuck SOPA and transfer your domains right now to stand up for the free flow of information on the Internet.

So, just to set the stage – this is not going to be about lean startup or agile development how to do some cool hack. It’s just me, tellin’ my story and sharing what I believe: that you should forget what others think of success and instead, do the crazy thing and stray off that path of success in order to follow your own passions. Because I believe that when you do that, you’re gonna rock it.

I started with a TED-style 15 minute talk:

Followed by an exercise to help everyone discover their own path that involved lots of 3×5 cards, a little creativity and – I hope – some awesome connecting with others.

You can find the full slide deck here: Follow Your Own Path.

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.

And he goes “I know, I know, the time travel one is probably a little crazy.” But then he starts telling me about this amazing belief he has in humanity’s potential to do things. In fact, in college, he studied Human Behavior and he loves all things about witnessing people’s potential. That’s what he started off his career doing. He’d gone to work for the military, but when he saw what they wanted him to do around human behavior, he didn’t like it and left.

And I’m thinking “My God, who is this guy that spends his spare time reading about Relativity and String Theory and used to do Human Behavior work for the military and he’s working in a grocery store?!”

And I guess he notices my befuddlement because he says “Well, I didn’t always used to do this – working at a grocery store.” and I’m thinking “okay, here we go.” He’s going to tell me he used to be a rocket scientist at NASA but he got laid off when the economy tanked.

But no, he tells me before this he was a manager at Home Depot.

I love encounters like this that knock us out of our beliefs about the world around us and remind us just how incredible people are. And it’s quite possible that working at that grocery store, helping those of us with our lists to enjoy the chore of grocery shopping is exactly the right place for him.

But it also just makes me wonder…

Can you imagine a world where everyone was enabled to follow their passions and realize their true potential? What would such a world look like? Would our militaries find ways for humanity to win out over war? Would we all be time traveling?!?

I know, I know… it’s all probably a little crazy. But it just makes me wonder…

In the 1980’s, Richard Stallman’s fierce beliefs in freedom and in the importance of free software (free as in free speech) towards securing the future of a free society led him to create the Free Software Foundation. FSF became the impetus behind the open source movement. Today, developers around the world freely volunteer their time to develop the open source software that tens of millions of us use every day.

In 2000, Jimmy Wales decided to launch a free online encyclopedia for children whose parents couldn’t afford their own. After a tedious process that produced a mere 24 articles, the encyclopedia’s editor – Larry Sanger – introduced wiki technology. That decision led to the 100% user generated encyclopedia that ultimately cost Larry his job. Today, Wikipedia is the world’s largest reference site with over 3.7 million articles. It attracts over 400 million unique visitors every month.

The Community

What is amazing in all of these instances is how people stood up and contributed. Contributed even though there was no clear reward for them to do so. AA members took the 12 Steps and created new chapters around the world, running those chapters with no involvement from Bill W. Developers regularly volunteer their time to create hundreds of thousands of open source projects. Wikipedia’s users not only write the articles, but they serve as custodians to the site. Ask Jimmy Wales who runs Wikipedia’s servers and he’ll tell you he has no idea. The users decide for themselves.

Not only do people voluntarily contribute, but they contribute high quality. A research study found Wikipedia on par with Encyclopedia Britannica for accuracy. And much open source software is considered the best of it’s kind.

The Catalysts

Bill Wilson, Richard Stallman, and Jimmy Wales are all catalysts. Catalysts are visionaries that develop amazing ideas. But instead of holding onto those ideas for themselves, they share their ideas with others. And they inspire others to take action on them. And then, the Catalyst steps out of the way and lets the community carry the idea to incredible results.

Catalysts share their ideas, but they don’t take ownership. If they had, every new AA chapter would have had to go through Bill W. and it would likely have never have reached as many it did. When Jimmy Wale’s initial free encyclopedia was “owned” by him and his editorial team, it managed 24 (as opposed to Wikipedia’s 3.7 million un-owned) articles. And Richard Stallman is quite vocal about his dissatisfaction on open source’s split from his initial vision. But he doesn’t take them down, and so the open source movement continues to grow.

Unstoppable

By not taking ownership, catalysts allow each and every member of the community to take hold of that ownership. The power is distributed to all of the people and these communities become unstoppable as Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom describe in The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.

The catalyst’s presence almost always remains felt, but catalysts understand it’s all about letting go and trusting the community, because that is where the true beauty lies.

Trust is a beautiful thing.

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

Had a ton of fun writing it – hope it’s as fun to read as it was to write:

Indistinguishable From Magic

This is the story of two worlds and the beings that inhabit them. One of these is our world. The one we can see and feel. The world of the “users.” It lies on our side of the video screen.

The other, an electronic micro-civilization, lives and breathes just beyond our grasp. This is the world of the programs. Because we, the users, have created this new world, part of us lives there too… On the other side of the screen.
– TRON

When it came out in 1982, TRON introduced us to a flashy, neon-drenched world of computers and hackers. A world where computer programs were fantastical beings with minds of their own that we could interact with.

Continue reading…

http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/new/new-nonfiction/indistinguishable-from-magic/

What do YOU think are the coolest new technologies that we’re seeing here on this side of the screen?

But I was also excited because they had a new stage called New Horizons about What’s Next for Agile? And I had the extreme honor of getting to present on this stage to share what’s been happening in the Startup community with the Agile community. To talk about how I believe Lean Startup is what’s next for agile. Not just startup projects, but all development.

And in the end – as it always seems to be – meeting all of the awesome people, having all of the enlightening (and sometimes slightly drunken) discussions, and remembering just how freakin’ amazing the Agile community truly is – I left feeling incredibly inspired, energized, and with this unshakeable feeling that there is just so much potential – so much more we can all be doing. So, even if 10 years has gone by, that doesn’t take away from how much more we can accomplish.

And with that in mind, here’s a quick screencast on how I believe Lean Startup pushes agile development to the next level…

You can find my complete slide deck on slideshare and I’d love to hear your thoughts on what’s next for agile.

What do YOU think is next for agile? Or do you think all this agile stuff is just crazy talk?

Friday night, 50 of them stood up and pitched their ideas in quick 60 second spots, interrupted only for a quick game of multiplayer rock-paper-scissors.

Pitches ran the gamut from gamifying entrepreneurship to games to solve the world’s biggest problems. From help with dating to help finding babysitters. Investing help through forecasting small company returns to a game that lets you invest in twitter hashtags.

One pitched a joke “I’m going to create a double rainbow – I mean, a Double Game Layer around the world!”. Some just sounded like it – DidWeShag.com for sharing those vital date details. And a guy named Sting pitched something about the Police (PayYourTicketsOnline.com).

There was some voting, but at the end of the night all that really mattered was weather you were willing to move forward with your idea. The 50 ideas dropped to 27, which eventually dropped to 16 – although part way through Saturday one of the entrepreneurs split from the startup he’d joined to return to his initial idea… And then there were 17.

Startups ranged in size from 2 to 15 people composed of everything from hard core techies to designers, business folks, even a doctor who came to build a startup for helping other doctors. Mentors came in on Saturday to help startups with their ideas. Several teams got out of the building to validate their ideas with potential customers. One even got a paying customer!

There was much use of the ample whiteboards (we actually wiped NERD clear out of flip charts!) in brainstorming and sketching out design. Much head’s down coding. And unbelievable levels of creativity, passion, and energy – which was good, as there wasn’t a whole lot of time for sleep over the weekend.

By Sunday things got real as teams worked towards the 5pm deadline when they’d get 5 minutes each to demo their startups & compete for some pretty swanky prizes including a day at MassChallenge bootcamp, meetings with angels, an XBox/Kinect for the team with the best use of Microsoft technology, and… a Keurig for the most energetic team!

Startup Weekend Demos

I’m not sure which was more entertaining – the demos themselves, including MapMyPad who actually broke out into the Hokey Pokey (forward to 2:10 in this video to witness it yourself), or the twitter back channel.

1st Place: CaseReportal. Vital insights for atypical cases.
     “WebMD for doctors”
     “CaseReportal is sooo gonna win the XBox360 and Kinect” @scottefein

2nd Place: SellerCrowd. Salespeople working together to make contacts quicker.
     “Quora for sales weasles” @JoshSamBob

3rd Place: CashTag. The Global Hashtag Exchange
     ”Twitter stock market for hash tags”  @YoungImpact
     “I own $16K worth of #SpongeBob on @playcashtag. It’s kind of embarrassing” @JoshSamBob

Oh You Kids. Ensuring your inheritance.
     “I named this company. In exchange for 25% equity or a mojito” @JoshSamBob

My Hobby Hub. Everyone has a talent to share.
     “Does Hobby Hub have a Pirate I can sail with?” @scottefein

VidWheel. Create video channels of anything you could watch online.
     “Pandora for video. that’s got p0rn written all over, and that means lots o money!” @412clifton

IdeaPhy. Turn your ideas into action.
     “Lets founders get crowdsourced feedback on their ideas. momma always said to share.” @412clifton

Farora. Stay beautiful.
     “Built for booking [hair] salons!” @marshsutherland
     “Unfortunately, not enough hair to use Farora, but interesting idea!” @BrienBuckman

PrescribableApps. Leveraging collaborative care for doctor-patient synergy.
     “Need to monitor your mental health? Now there’s an @rxapps for that” @412clifton
     “I’m concerned with the security of this app. Especially if it’s tracking my sexual desires.” @moolawn

HereHello. Making pickup lines obsolete.
     "No more pickup lines? That’s half the fun!” @jtagen

eForecqst. Forecasting tomorrow’s gems.
     “An interesting idea, which might be helpful for individual investors like myself.” @BrienBuckman
     “I’d use this service.” @scottefein

HereHype. Connecting merchants downtime with students free time.
     “Seems to be a flash groupon with lots of high-fives” @jtagen
     "I wonder if they realize they look kinda like the Winkelvoss Twins…” @scottefein

PocketRoster. Always keep your members at your fingertips!
     “A roster in your pocket.” @scottefein
     “Probably one of the most immediately useful things introduced at StartupWeekend Boston” @JarrettGoetz
     “Hard to say the name with a straight face, but the app is fantastic” @jtagen

And, yup, CaseReportal won the XBox/Kinect for most awesome use of Microsoft technology – CONGRATS!!

See more: Startup Weekend Boston Pictures

“To change one’s life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions.”
– William James

I got this quote from Michael Bungay Stanier’s book Do More Great Work. Great Work, you see, is what lights you up, it’s what makes a difference. Great Work is the work that matters.

I can picture you right now, reading that phrase and I just know you’ve got an idea. Something you’d love to do. An area you could really make an impact in, that would build on all those things you kick ass at, the things you’re truly passionate about, the stuff of heroes.

I know that’s what made me buy Stanier’s book and probably all those others who’ve launched it to the #1 rank in it’s category on Amazon’s Kindle store.

So why aren’t we all out there doing our Great Work?

Can you imagine if each of us managed just one piece of Great Work this year? Not just for how awesome it would make us feel (although that would be pretty amazing). But for the difference it would make in the world when everyone was out there doing something more. Something that pushed beyond the same old same old we spend so much of our lives in.

So what’s stopping us?

Part of it might be trying to figure out what to do. For that, pick up a copy of Do More Great Work, and let Stanier guide you through a series of exercises – maps actually – to help you discover your Great Work.

But part of it might be that you’re actually resisting the change it would require if you were to embark on such greatness.

Our Immunity to Change

Even when we want to behave differently, we often find it incredibly hard to do so. Just think back to all those New Year’s resolutions, diet attempts… you get the drift. The reason we resist, according to Robert Kegan & Lisa Lahey, is that we’ve often got hidden, competing commitments that are holding us back.

Stanier gives the example that perhaps you want to be more assertive in meetings, yet each time you attend, you find yourself passive and quiet. Why? Perhaps being passive and quiet serves a deeper, unspoken goal or commitment, such as being a team player, being liked, or building a reputation as a non-complainer.

Typically, this deeper, unspoken commitment is a defense mechanism against something we fear.

Digging In

To understand, Kegan & Lahey ask a series of questions:

1. What is it you’re committed to doing?
2. What behaviors are you doing (or not doing) that are working against achieving this commitment?
3. Why? What commitment have you made to yourself that compels you to operate this way?
4. What is your big assumption behind this competing commitment?

Below is an example adapted from one Kegan & Lahey gave for a school Principal. The Principal was sincerely committed to creating powerful learning experiences for every child in his school. And yet, he was acting in ways that worked directly against his goal and, thus stopped him from achieving his Great Work around learning.

Testing our Assumptions

I wish I could say otherwise, but there’s usually some truth to our Big Assumptions. Personally, I want to mentor more startups to help them be successful and yet am finding myself regularly unavailable to those that reach out to me. In part I fear I don’t have time to talk to every startup, but in part is a greater fear that I’ll have zero idea how to help them and be found out as a horrible fraud.

So, sadly it’s true. I don’t have time to talk to every startup in the world, and there are going to be a large number of startups that I’m at a complete loss for how to help, who may indeed see me as useless.

The issue is, when I accept my assumption as an unquestioning, global truth, I hold myself back from greatness. In reality, the assumption probably only holds true in certain circumstances. For example, if I try to mentor an entrepreneurial particle physicist I will become a complete, blabbering idiot (which, alas, I know from personal experience).

So, what we need to do – and I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear me say this – is test our assumptions!

We need to gain a little clarity around those boundaries. Kegan & Lahey have found that even small changes in people’s Big Assumptions can lead to significant changes in their actions and sense of possibility. Their advice is to design tests that question parts of your assumption. For example, I might try talking to a startup that’s developing software – as opposed to, say, subatomic microscopes – and ask them how I can help. If it’s something I can do, I’ve learned that there are startups I can help and now have an option for where to start my Great Work.

If it’s not something I can do, I can test my assumption that they’ll view me as a horrible fraud. Unless the particle physicist is reading this in which case I invite you to post your answer in the comments below. 

(okay, not really)

The point is, if we can figure out what’s stopping us, that’s our first step to kicking ass. I mean, to Doing Great Work.

What great work would YOU like to do?

My secret plan is to travel far and wide, getting developers excited about working for startups.You know, like an evangelist or something…

You can also find a short (~10 minute) version of this with the voice over here: Lean Startup 101 for Developers.
And you might also check out Is Deploying to Production 50x/Day a GOOD Idea? for some additional thoughts on Continuous Deployment.

What Lean Startup topics would YOU like to learn more about?

Yet Another Podcast #30 Abby Fichtner–Microsoft Evangelist

Abby Fichtner is a Microsoft Evangelist specializing in startups in the New England area.
She joined Microsoft recently after a fateful discussion with Jesse at CodeMash 2010, and discusses Startups, Agile programming and being a Microsoft Evangelist.