LeanLaunchLab: Test and innovate on your business model using the business model canvas, lean startup, and customer development. Structuring the software design process. I had a great time last week discussing software architecture across a mix of QCon, our software architecture training and the IASA session that I ran. I mentioned this earlier in the year, but we've enhanced our material around the architecture definition process to include much more guidance on how you go about actually designing software when all you have is a set of requirements and a blank sheet of paper.
In addition to understanding the requirements (functional and non-functional), constraints and principles; it's really about putting some structure into the diagrams that you might draw during your initial agile modeling rather than drawing up a single very complex and cluttered picture that is hard to explain or understand. I've already written about not needing a UML tool to undertake the software design process and I normally use either a whiteboard, flip chart or index cards, especially when I'm collaborating on the design with others. Product Development: 9 Steps for Creative Problem Solving [INFOGRAPHIC] Ronald Brown is a successful startup CEO with an extensive background in technology and consumer marketing. His new book, Anticipate. The Architecture of Small Team Innovation and Product Success is available via iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.
Creativity is the main prerequisite for innovation. However, our culture emphasizes critical thinking to the near exclusion of creative thinking (although it was the key to success in the Information Age). What constitutes creative thinking? In business, the process of generating and commercializing a good idea has been honed by creative industries for more than a hundred years. Facebook - New Look & Concept on Behance. Eric Ries On How To Make Any Company Move Like A Lean Startup. "It's like an alternate reality," Eric Ries says. The entrepreneur-turned-author whose Lean Startup--the book, then the movement--infused the Valley/Alley lexicon with now-ubiquitous terms like "pivot" and "minimum viable product," is now boldly going where few startup guys have gone before: corporate America.
It's "like on Star Trek or something," he says of his consulting forays with organizations including Intuit, GE, and the U.S. government. "Everyone is very familiar and very alien at the same time. " While a 300,000-person company looks nothing like one with 100 people, Ries says the problems that entrepreneurs in those super-sized ecosystems are dealing with are the exact same ones that he made a name for himself researching.
His intellectual labors have earned big-name adherents: Intuit's Scott Cook, GE's Beth Comstock, and the White House's Todd Park all spoke at the Lean Startup conference last year, evidencing that yes, entrepreneurship can happen in a corporate setting. "Entrepreneurs are crazy" and that's a good thing. By Kurt Wagner, reporter FORTUNE -- In a crowded seminar room in Silicon Valley recently, author Steve Blank asked the audience who among them wished to start their own company. A few dozen hands shot up. "The good news," said Blank, whose second book, The Startup Owner's Manual, hit shelves in March, "is that one of you will be worth $100 million in 10 years. The bad news: the rest of you would have been better off working at Walmart. " Blank has never been shy about his opinions. His first book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, unintentionally vilified both venture capitalists and business school scholars.
You've said that entrepreneurs are "crazy. " What is the biggest mistake that young entrepreneurs make? Epiphanies can have a powerful impact on an entrepreneur. How important is it for young companies to remain flexible and understand what it means to 'pivot'? Do entrepreneurs put enough focus on customer relationships? The Startup Owner's Manual is your second book.