Asking for Help
A big part of the Customer Development process laid out in The Four Steps to the Epiphany is doing interviews with real people outside the building, but the question is always, “Where do I find those people?” Typically you know a few, but where should you go from there? While there are various places to look, some of the best leads come from asking your initial set of interviewees for their recommendations. This yields not only possibilities, but pre-qualified possibilities that come with a referral – a potent combination for being able to set up actual interviews.
But how you ask for referrals makes a big difference, and Kevin has an awesome post on his blog – The Magic Word in Customer Development Emails – that supplements the advice from Four Steps really nicely. As per the title, I thought his hard-won experience with using the right words to elicit a response was golden.
What Makes a Good Estimate?
We recently got some really high praise from a client:
Thank you for everything you have done so far. Our reception has been very strong from our customer base and we seem to be off to a great start. […] We have a pretty good idea that our next feature will be around X. Right now, I need to know how much money this feature may cost in order to get a better idea of time frames and what we need to do with respect to current customer load and additional funding. […] The original estimate of N hours was almost spot on, and so was most everything else, so an estimate/guesstimate is fine. I’m sure this will generate more questions.
(Emphasis mine)
While the kudos are awesome, what really stuck out to me was the client’s perception that our estimate was spot on. I totally understand that perception: from a happy client’s perspective, a good estimate is in the result, not the process. But if an outside observer were to judge our estimation process for the project by conventional standards, they’d probably conclude that the estimate we put together was pathetic. “What?” you say? Let me explain…
Gone Nomading
The virtual company is pretty new as such things go. The ability to work from anywhere – in particular to collaborate with a whole group of people while working from anywhere – is something that’s only just become possible within the last 10-15 years. As instant messaging, voice chat, video chat, good quality tools for online collaboration, and more have become available, a new way of working has opened up that allows us to stay very connected with a group of people without having to be in the same physical place every day.
I originally conceived Terralien as such a company four years ago, and it remains that way today. We have no physical office, and occasionally when initially working with a new crew member I won’t meet them in person until months after they’re an integral part of the team. It’s not that we’re against physical co-location, it’s just that it involves a set of trade-offs and we prefer the trade-offs of being virtual to the trade-offs of having an office.
But no matter how much we appreciate the flexibility of working from wherever, we still often feel the need to spend some time in the same place with fellow geeks. The wife and kids can only take so many explanations of the latest cool hack we pulled off, and a change of scenery can really help get the creative juices flowing. As with so many other remote workers, we started heading out to a coffee shop on occasion, which was fun, but still didn’t quite cut it.
Fixed Bid?
One of the few mailing lists I’m on these days is the Lean Startup Circle – it’s a really smart crowd, and the signal to noise ratio tends to be very high. In response to someone’s question about doing projects fixed bid I decided to go into some detail about my thoughts on fixed bid projects:
What it boils down to is that a software development shop taking on a fixed bid project has a few options: spend ages spec’ing the project to the last detail, pad the project like crazy to handle scope creep, deny (or at least make incredibly difficult) change requests to control costs, or go out of business. I’ve never liked any of those options, which is why I’ve always done my consulting gigs T&M and won’t ever ask contract developers working on my startups to do fixed bid development.
You should definitely read the whole thing – I’m curious to see how the group responds, and would love to hear any thoughts you have in the comments.
Nathaniel at FutureRuby
I had the opportunity to open up the FutureRuby conference in Toronto, Canada this past weekend. For more details, including the full text of the talk, head over here: Owning the Means of Production.
The Lean Startup Primer
I’ve been focused on the care and feeding of young businesses for over three years now. It’s my passion. It’s what compels me to run Terralien. It’s what got me interested in the ideas behind Spreedly. It’s one of the skills I’m most excited about passing onto each of my children. It’s something that I’m on a never-ending quest to get better at.
So when an idea comes along that has the potential to make more young businesses successful, I get really excited about it. Sometimes so excited that I have to do something to promulgate it right away. When I ran across the growing Lean Startup meme last week, it intersected with my passion so powerfully that I spent most of the weekend building the Lean Startup Primer.
Now, my interest in Lean Startup concepts didn’t begin last week: I’ve been applying some lean principles for years, mostly under the auspices of Getting Real, and have further been studying lean manufacturing concepts for months seeking ways to help Terralien deliver better value for our clients. As a matter of fact, just this past Tuesday I had a discussion before the Agile RTP meeting about wanting to put on a course about lean principles and how they apply to young software businesses. But I was missing Customer Development, Steve Blank’s excellent methodology for finding out what the market really wants before spending time building the wrong thing.
With a (more) complete picture of how to apply lean principles to formational businesses, I knew it was time to get real and actually teach the material, and thus the Lean Startup Primer was born. The goal is not to teach you everything there is to know about Lean Startups (the mind boggles), but rather to give you an overview of the powerful principles involved and a jumping off point from which to learn more. With a very small class size (12 people max) and hosted at the wonderful Carrboro Creative Coworking, it should be a fantastic experience. If it goes at all well there will be additional events, though the price will go up after this inaugural session.
I’m really, really excited about the Lean Startup Primer, and I hope to see you in Carrboro on June 17th: sign up now!
Five Skills Every Freelancer Must Have
If there’s one thing I do a lot at Terralien, it’s work with freelancers. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned while working with them, it’s that some freelancers are way better than other freelancers, and the difference usually isn’t technical. Thus I’ve been chewing on the idea of giving a talk about some of the important differences between those who excel and those who struggle, and I got my first chance to do so at RubyRX this past weekend.
I’d appreciate any feedback you have, either in the comments below or at SpeakerRate, as I’m hoping to take this material (and more) and flesh it out in to a course and/or a book.
A little about how this was recorded: I set up my Flip Video Recorder on a little tripod with the expectation that it would run out of space at 60 minutes and I’d have a recording to review for technique and to improve the next talk, but that I wouldn’t capture the whole thing. Well, I was wrong: I got everything except the last 5-10 minutes of questions! I think because the view was stationary that the video compressed well. All in all I captured just over 83 minutes on my 60 minute Flip.
A Coffee Shop Chat
As part of the lead-up to RubyRX I got the opportunity to sit down with Jared Richardson and chat about Ruby, what makes a well-rounded programmer, Spreedly, the importance of going to at least one or two conferences a year, and more:
The funny thing (in retrospect at least!) is that we did the interview twice, but the first time, unbeknownst to us, the tape ran out halfway through! I’m just glad it turned out natural the second time, probably because we talked about a somewhat different set of topics.
Thanks to Jared for doing the interview – it was a blast. Hope you enjoy it!
Why You Should Be At RubyRX
In his excellent book The War of Art, Steven Pressfield talks about “Turning Pro” as the key to overcoming resistance and consistently spending time on what we truly value:
Aspiring artists defeated by Resistance share one trait. They all think like amateurs. They have not yet turned pro.
…
The traditional interpretation is that the amateur pursues his calling out of love, while the pro does it for money. Not the way I see it. In my view, the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his “real” vocation.
The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He commits full-time.
That’s what I mean when I say turning pro.
Resistance hates it when we turn pro.
Steven Pressfield, The War of Art, “Professionals and Amateurs”
For myself, a big part of turning pro in software development was committing that I would go to at least one excellent conference every year. It’s a costly commitment at times, but it’s been so incredibly worth the investment. I’ve formed lasting relationships, gotten the jump on important techniques and technology, and found out about tools that I still use on a regular basis. I’ve also seen that a conference serves to get me pumped up to tackle things that I’ve been putting off, and gives me new perspective on problems I’ve been scratching my head over.
I’m a big fan of hobbyist conferences. RubyConf has been my mainstay for years, and I’ll be at the most excellent acts_as_conference in a few weeks. But I also think there’s an important part to be played by professional conferences that have an invite-only speaker list, and are paid for by attendees rather than by sponsors. If you look at the list of speakers and the set of sessions scheduled for RubyRX, you’ll find an A-list of smart folks and a wide set of topics guaranteed to teach you something outside your comfort zone. And if you’re a professional software developer, as I know many of you are, then I believe you’ll find yourself more than paid back in learning and growth by attending. There’ll be talks on Merb and Rails 3, Erlang, Clojure, Sinatra and more – how many of these topics have you wanted to explore but just haven’t had time to yet? Well here’s your chance!
If you’re not a professional yet, still sitting on the sidelines, then this could be a great opportunity to make the jump. A conference like RubyRX is a great kick in the pants, and can give you the confidence to go to the next level. You’ll get lots of hallway time to chat and get inspiration from those who’ve already turned pro, and the sessions will generate all kinds of ideas on how to go from being an amateur to being a professional. I’ll personally be giving two talks that I think every professional should hear – one on the Fear of Programming (with more from the War of Art) and one on the Five Skills Every Freelancer Should Have.
RubyRX is February 19th-21st, 2009 in Raleigh, NC. You have until the end of the week to (January 30th) to get the early bird price, so don’t delay. I can’t guarantee that RubyRX will be one of the excellent conferences this year, but I can guarantee that Jared, myself, the other speakers and all the attendees are going to do our best to make it so. And it’s even more likely to be excellent if you decide to come, so sign up, come out, and let us help you “turn pro”!
Sprint or Marathon?
Both sprints and marathons have starting lines, and the people lined up behind them are equally pumped up to start running the race. Adrenaline courses through the veins of a marathon runner on the starting line as surely as it does through the runner of a sprint waiting for the gun. And each kind of runner looks towards the finish line for their race, the end goal in sight.
And yet – what happens between the start and finish of a marathon and a sprint couldn’t be more different. In a sprint, the effort is focused in to mere seconds or perhaps minutes, and the runners push hard, giving everything they’ve got with each foot traveled. It doesn’t matter if they collapse after only running a few hundred yards – so long as they got over the finish line first, they’ve won. The start is critical, as it makes up a huge percentage of the race, and as the race is run, a tiny stumble spells doom. It’s a very unforgiving race – everything must be done just right, or there’ll be no trophy.
A marathon is something altogether different. Everyone knows as they leave the starting line that they’re going to be running a long time, and that if they don’t pace themselves they’ll never make it to the end much less have the best time. The start is important, but pales in comparison to sustained progress. Even a large stumble disappears in to the noise of the race so long as it doesn’t result in any physical damage. And the race is as much against the clock as it is against the other runners, with everyone striving towards their personal best.
Now, I’m more of a sitter than a runner, so I know these things not from experiencing them but rather from watching Chariots of Fire and talking to people who have run marathons. But what I do have lots of first hand experience with is building businesses, and I can tell you that there are important, enduring lessons to be had in this comparison for anyone thinking of starting a business. The external view of entrepreneurship, and the view of many just starting out in it, is that it’s a sprint: all the energy focused in to a small period of time for a huge pay-off at the end. Yet once you have a few months of a new business under your belt you’ll discover that it’s really a marathon, with the focus being on endurance and constant progress. Going really fast turns out to be overrated, and envisioning and constantly moving towards a finish line that is well out of sight is what separates the winners from the losers.
Those who approach business as a sprint quickly burn out. They run the first few months, maybe even the first year or two, with a gusto that seems enviable. And yet, as time wears on, they tire and start to get discouraged, and often collapse well before the half way point. Those who realize they’re embarking on a marathon, however, get off to a good start, and yet quickly fall far behind the sprinters. But soon enough they catch up, and then gradually leave those less prepared behind.
As you think about the business you want to start (I know you have one!), are you prepared for it to be a marathon? Are you ready to stick it out for years to make it a success? Big, sudden success stories are usually the product of years of quiet persistence, or as Sam Walton said of Wal-Mart, “Like most other overnight successes, it was about 20 years in the making.”
So which are you planning to run? A sprint, or a marathon?
