Importance of Lean Agile approach for a Start-up Project

Importance of Lean Agile approach for a Start-up Project

Start-up should always stay lean till it achieves breakeven as well as achieve product market fit. Agile methodologies strongly support the start up to stay lean, launch the product in batches to test its acceptance by the target audience and be able to make the right tweaks till the product is accepted by target consumer market.

Having a lean approach to the Start-ups is very fruitful because of Less mass: small teams so they’ll be multi-tasking and they can adapt to new change and good ideas by leaving the bas ones, Lower the cost of change: change tends to happen in the market. Hence investing less will allow them to new opportunities “Keep it small. Keep it simple. Let it happen”. –Andrew Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmers, Embraces the constraints: initially start-ups might face some issues, but they can work with what they have in store by Being True to themselves rather than copying someone with the methodologies or ideas. Nimble, agile, less-mass businesses can quickly change their entire business model, product, feature set, and marketing message (37signals, p. 28). 

 Key concepts of lean process improvement

Agile methods majorly focus on reducing risk and uncertainty and maximizing productivity for an enterprise. It also has enduring appeal and ‘proved’ itself in software development. Having an agile approach for a Start-ups is beneficial as it builds accountability, empowers various ideas, the scope of continuous improvement and gets feedbacks from tested decisions (Apm.org.uk, 2016). Lean principles connect with agile development in three concepts: Iterative Approach, Short feedback loops& disciplined project management process (LeanKit, 2017). Start-ups should think more realistically with their objectives and the market they are stepping in as the main aim is to be agile & deliver good.  Scrum framework is under agile methodologies that many Start-ups can adopt to always follow the road map they have created to achieve the desired goals.

It is important for business at all stages of starting up, growth or scale to follow lean agile methodologies to justify the use of all business resources with relevant returns from customer. Lean agile methodology helps business track, every penny spent and measure the returns, thus plan for future with better insights in hand. 

*****

BIBLIOGRAPHY-

Text:

Getting Real by 37signals. (n.d.). [Online] Available at: https://basecamp.com/books/Getting%20Real.pdf.

Apm.org.uk. (2016). Why do you need agile in project management? | APM. [online] Available at: https://www.apm.org.uk/resources/find-a-resource/agile-project-management/why-do-you-need-agile-in-project-management/. [Online] [Accessed 25 Oct. 2019].

LeanKit. (2017). LeanKit. [online] Available at: https://leankit.com/learn/lean/lean-and-agile-development/.  [Accessed 8 Nov. 2019].

Image:

Key concepts of lean process improvement  (2017). LeanKit. Available at: https://leankit.com/learn/lean/3-key-concepts-of-lean-process-improvement/. [Online]  [Accessed 25 Oct. 2019].