Software Craft and Lean Startup – TSM article

Note from the authors: This article was published in 2014, and therefore uses the historical term “Software Craftsmanship”. We have since discontinued the use of this term in favor of the more inclusive “Software Craft”. We have updated the article in Sep 2023 to reflect this change, however there may still be places where it’s used. We appreciate your understanding and patience with this matter.

Alexandru Bolboaca and Adrian Bolboaca’s article about Lean Startup movement was published in the Today Software Magazine, no 20, page 15. You can read here a fragment of the article.

Software Craft and Lean Startup

The Lean Startup movement was a revolution in the startup world, although it started from a simple observation. The standard way to create a startup was until recently “Build, Measure, Learn”, briefly meaning:

• An entrepreneur comes up with a product vision
• After obtaining necessary financing, he/she builds the product according to the vision
• The product is tested on the market
• If it’s successful, awesome! If not, it’s modified to be closer to the needs of real users.

The problem of this model is that at the time when the product is market tested, it was already built, meaning that money and effort were invested in it. From the technical point of view, the product was often rushed, the programmers worked under pressure and the code is difficult to change and full of bugs.

Steve Blank and Eric Ries came up with the idea to reverse this cycle and use “Learn, Measure, Build” instead:

• An entrepreneur comes up with a product vision
• The vision is turned into a set of hypothesis
• Each hypothesis is tested through an experiment. The result of the experiment is measurable and compared with the expectations defined in the hypothesis.
• Once the hypothesis was validated, the solution can be developed and packaged in a product.

Read more on http://issuu.com/todaysoftmag/docs/tsm_20_2014_en, page 15.