About David Bland

David has enjoyed success using lean and agile techniques at several companies in San Francisco and Washington DC. He joined his first dot com startup in 1999 and helped lead it to a 13 million dollar acquisition in 2006. Currently David brings startup thinking into large organizations to foster corporate entrepreneurship. He can usually be found writing, speaking and coaching around lean startup, business model generation and kanban.

3 Keys for Innovation: Why Lean Startup Isn’t Enough

Posted By David Bland on May 7, 2013
5 Comments

Innovators have a new dilemma. While it is cheaper than ever to achieve problem/solution fit, the rate of change makes it expensive and difficult to maintain product/market fit.

Companies need to do more than just apply Lean Startup concepts, they need a holistic focus on three key areas:

1. Lean Startup
2. Business Model Innovation
3. Continuous Delivery

lean startup business model innovation continuous delivery

The Dangers of a Myopic Approach

Though leveraging all three at once may seem overwhelming, those who do so can thrive in extreme uncertainty. To see why, let’s start by breaking down the dangers of only focusing on one of these key ingredients. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise Lean Startup, Lean Startup
Tagged With: business model innovation, continuous delivery, enterprise lean startup, Lean Startup

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Rise of the Lean Executive

Posted By David Bland on February 20, 2013
3 Comments

“No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it.” – Peter Drucker

Drucker has passed on, but fortunately for us his ideas have not.

Corporate executives are turning to books like The Lean Startup for ideas on how to keep their organizations relevant. (I know because I see the growing demand for it in our work)

Lean Executive

They are frustrated and under an enormous amount of pressure. Not only do executives have to worry about other large and mid-sized companies, but now even startups, seemingly come out of nowhere to take away market share.

Executives are discovering it isn’t enough to encourage practices such as building Minimum Viable Products to create meaningful change in their organizations.

Smart executives realize that to win the game, their organizations need to discover, learn, and act quicker than the competition.

I call these executives, Lean Executives. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise Agile, Leadership, Lean Startup, Organizational Agility
Tagged With: Enterprise Agile, enterprise lean startup, Lean, lean executive, lean leader, organizational agility

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Product Owners: Are You Solving Real Problems?

Posted By David Bland on November 13, 2012
2 Comments

I’ve seen this look too many times from product owners as of late. As organizations shift from can we build it to should we build it, the future of Scrum hangs in the balance. Scrum, as it is practiced today, is still too focused on delivery.

Today we task product owners with activities such as:

Meticulously prioritizing a backlog based on assumed business value
Answering questions at a moment’s notice from the team throughout the day
Decomposing monolithic efforts into small, user centric batches.

… and yet none if this matters unless you are solving a real problem!

Fortunately for us, product owners are in a great position to help us take our next evolutionary step from can we build to should we build. To do so however, they’ll need to leverage other iterative and lightweight visual thinking tools. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Customer Development, Enterprise Agile, Leadership, Lean Startup, Organizational Agility, Product Development, Project Management
Tagged With: Agile Project Management, business model canvas, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Product Backlog, Product Owner, Project Management, Scrum Product Owner, user stories

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BigVisible Webinar: Lean Startup in the Enterprise

Posted By David Bland on August 28, 2012
1 Comment

The principles put forth in Eric Ries’ Lean Startup aren’t just for startups. Lean startup practices can and do work in the enterprise too. In this recorded webinar, Lean Startup in the Enterprise, agile coach David J. Bland discusses what lean startup in the enterprise is, how it works, and how agile principles and practices can help you quickly test and validate your hypotheses and gather customer feedback.

In the pre-recorded Lean Startup in the Enterprise webinar, you will learn:

The basics of lean startup in the enterprise
How to test a hypothesis without harming your brand
Why fast customer feedback is crucial for success

Upcoming Lean Startup-Focused Webinars from BigVisible

Join us on September 28, 2012, at 10:00 Pacific, 1:00 Eastern as David hosts a follow-up webinar on another lean startup topic: Unlocking the Business Model Canvas.

Questions from Lean Startup in the Enterprise Webinar

After viewing the webinar, you might want to check out these questions from attendees, along with David’s answers: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Agile Coaching, Agile Presentations, Lean Startup
Tagged With: Lean Startup, lean startup and agile, lean startup and scrum, lean startup in the enterprise

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Teams Need Business Models, Not Business Plans

Posted By David Bland on August 13, 2012
2 Comments

I don’t read a lot of fiction, but when I do, it’s a 100+ page business plan attached to a 5-year spreadsheet with numbers that all go up and to the right.

As a result, the business plan has unfortunately become the main character in success theater. It’s rarely read and understood by executives, but perhaps even more tragic is that it doesn’t even satisfy the needs for teams actually trying to execute to the plan.

the dreaded business plan document
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Enterprise Agile, Lean Startup, Organizational Agility, Tools
Tagged With: business model canvas, business models, business plans, planning, Validated Learning

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The Enterprise Build-Measure-Learn Network

Posted By David Bland on July 30, 2012
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Build -> Measure -> Learn loops are often broken in large organizations, mostly due to the fact that functional silos do not enable validated learning.

These functional silos, coupled with large batch builds, often result in measurements being conducted on an ad hoc basis in isolation without context.

Broken loops make validated learning difficult

Networks Enable Validated Learning

If you do decide to hone in on actionable metrics, create a network that connects those who are measuring the outcomes of all of your hard work.

Validated learning requires a network

Validated Learning Should Feed the Product Backlog

Once the network is created, take these collective learnings back to the product owner. Unless you feed these back into the backlog all of your data crunching will go ignored on a wiki somewhere.

Validated learning is only possible when collective learnings become part of the product backlog

Once the Build -> Measure -> Learn network is created in your organization, you will not only will feed validated learning back into your backlog, but you will also help break down those functional silos to deliver value.

Looking for a little more lean in your life? You are in luck, David Bland is hosting a free webinar on Lean Startup principles, August 24th, 11 A.M PST/ 2 P.M EST.

Let’s get Lean! Sign me Up!

Filed Under: Enterprise Agile, Lean Startup
Tagged With: lean startup in the enterprise, learning loops, Validated Learning

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Agile Coaching Tip: What Is an Empathy Map?

Posted By David Bland on June 25, 2012
2 Comments

An empathy map is a collaborative tool teams can use to gain a deeper insight into their customers. Much like a user persona, an empathy map can represent a group of users, such as a customer segment. The empathy map was originally created by Dave Gray and has been gaining popularity with the agile community.

What Does an Empathy Map Look Like?

An empathy map consists of a simple face surrounded by six sections:

1. Think & Feel
2. Hear
3. See
4. Say & Do
5. Pain
6. Gain

How Would I Use an Empathy Map?

A sample empathy mapping session may be as follows:

Assemble your team and have them bring any personas, data, or insights about the target of your empathy map.

Print out, or sketch, the empathy map template on a large piece of paper or whiteboard.

Hand each team member sticky notes and a marker.

Each person should add at least one sticky to every section.

Ask questions, such as what would this user be:

- thinking & feeling about their worries or aspirations?
- hearing while using our product, from their friends or boss?
- seeing while using our product in their environment?
- saying & doing while using our product in public or in private?
- experiencing as a pain point or fear when using our product?
- experiencing as a positive or gain when using our product?

Have the team members speak about the sticky notes as they place them on the empathy map. Ask questions about deeper insights so that they can be elaborated for the rest of the team.

To help bring the user to life, sketch out the characteristics this person may have on the center of the face.

At the end of the session, ask the team members what insights they’ve learned. More importantly, ask them what hypotheses they now have about the users that they’d like to validate.

When Would I Use an Empathy Map?

Empathy maps can be used whenever you find a need to immerse yourself in a user’s environment.

They can be helpful when, but are not limited to:

- diving into the customer segments of a business model canvas
- elaborating on user personas
- capturing the behaviors when pair interviewing a customer
- building out the “user” in your user story

What If My Team Is Distributed?

While empathy mapping sessions are ideally conducted in a collocated scenario, online tools are emerging that allow you to host a session virtually. I’ve created a simple Google Docs Template that is simple to use. Innovation Games has also recently added the empathy map to its collection of online experiences.