Pick up as many different versions of the book...
"Marketing Mistakes" you can afford.
A new version releases every few years.
Read through both the failures + successes Hartley covers.
Many of these businesses... at least the successful ones use a lean product cycle.
One of my businesses produces powder mixes. We do produce on demand, where inventory usually turns in days, sometimes hours.
Another of my businesses is a high traffic hosting company.
The product produced is hosting services, so product cycle is zero time. A person comes on as a client. I add their site(s) to a new or existing LXD container + they start paying instant continuity.
Best lean product cycles tend to be high dollar, continuity based services.
I love this question! Don't really love the responses you received here so I will give you my two cents.
My name is Humberto, I'm an investor, entrepreneur, and strategist. I own and operate several companies and startups and focus my days primarily on my marketing agency www.Unthink.me - we bring big business tools and experts to small growing companies. I've been there and done that... I also have an MBA and have made and lost millions. I still consider myself a freelancer and really enjoy what I do which is why you will typically find me here trying to be of help. As you can imagine, I get to work with many entrepreneurs in a variety of industries and of them is technology and engineering. My agency, for example, has a client partner who employs a team of almost 100 software engineers who design, prototype and build custom software solutions for SMBs and government programs as well as startups and small businesses with low budgets. If you find my content elsewhere you may notice that I have mentioned a methodology that I've followed for years now called Blue Ocean Strategy - this methodology is a perfect pair for the Lean Startup Methodology and of course the lean product development methodologies, this company partner called www.BetaBulls.com is able to offer low-cost affordable custom software because they employ these methodologies combined and rely heavily on the lean product cycle to deliver on time and at low costs without limiting themselves to a particular industry.
The Lean Product development cycle typically consists of
- Ideas being brought on by client or team, half day sessions sketching and laying out design plans. The majority of the time is spent here to avoid further revisions.
- Building a simple but working sketch prototype of what will be the final outcome, presenting it to the client while development of final software application begins.
- Producing the actual SaaS or App, some of their clients focus on i-9 verification or FAFSA related doc intake for universities...
- Measure - once the product has been completed and deployed depending on the client and type of work the marketing (us) kicks into gear measuring the success of user flow, lead conversion, traffic, click through, operation, ease of use, UXUI, etc. etc. while Beta Bulls measures the requests, speed such as load times, etc, etc.
- Gather data - the data is given to client and meetings are schedule for review and to decide whether or not to continue making improvements or leaving as is.
This approach, like I said, helps the deployment of software a lot faster but when leveraged with other practices the quality also tends to go up, just like it would with any other industry or service. Lean product approach is not meant to help deliver high quality but instead just focused on rapid deployment. If you are planning on relying heavily on this make sure that you are pairing it with another set of guidelines so that your short or long term outcome is not sacrificed.
- Humberto Valle
Founder & CEO www.Unthink.me
VIP Group: http://bit.ly/2uoJD7y
https://twitter.com/OfficialUnthink
Do you actually mean Lean Product and Process Development?
If so, great examples you can find are:
Toyota, Goodyear, Harley Davidson, Ping, Ford, and recently I notice TechnipFMC Schilling Robotics.
You can also find articles on companies that haven't adopted this as a business strategy yet have had success applying it in a specific product development effort, such as Metso Neles NDX intelligent valve controller.
