Below are the 50 books I was able to complete in 2011 (next year I'm shooting for 52!). It's mostly non-fiction and entrepreneurship-related, but there is a sprinkle of fiction and humanities in there somewhere. Most of these books have separate blog posts written about them (you can also search). Happy holidays everyone, and happy new year!
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The New Science of Product Development View more presentations from James Birchler James is the VP of Engineering at IMBU, the very first Lean Startup founded by Eric Ries. IMVU experimented heavily on its way to tens of millions in annual revenue. In his talk, James describes how to build a culture and team of experimentation in your startup. You can watch the video and see the slides above. Below are my notes on James Birchler's talk on experimentation at IMVU. I enjoyed his talk, particularly the segments that dealt with the specifics of IMVU's processes. The Scientific Method is based on experimentation.
Core:
Story of Copernicus
Giordano Bruno (burned at stake) Galileo
It was hard for these guys because the folks in charge didn't like hearing "bad news." IMVU
And cycle back to beginning Lean startup: build, measure, learn loop
Culture of experimentation: Started out as simple as this: if (setup_experiment(...) == "control") { // do it the old way } else { // do it the new way } Then later built robust experiment management system
Also built tool to calculate statistical significance
Embrace failure with exec team and whole company. Embrace failure as an opportunity to learn. Highest paid person's opinion (HiPPO) is not assumed to be correct. Reference to paper "Practical guide to controlled experiments on the web." Easy to screw up process at every stage
Don't ask customers what they want. Instead, ask customers what they are trying to do. Focus on use cases and not what they say they want. What not to do: build what customers say they want. Do this:
It takes a lot of courage to balance experience, instinct, imagination, and experiment results. "If you design a toaster oven and need to include directions for making toast, you have failed at designing a toaster oven." -Laura Klein Don't just run a bunch of experiments without a strong point of view of what trying to learn. Experiment design
experiment interpretation
Experiments are a great way to test hypotheses, not form them. Product development Build:
Make the size of the fix commensurate with the size of the problem. Handling interrupts
User testing:
Have a fixer: remove blocks, remain objective, team happiness = team productivity Technical project reviews:
Shake things up
I wanted to write a short post on the topic of time management, mainly asking a question as opposed to providing an answer. I'm curious to learn how readers manage their busy schedules and what time slicing method works for them.
By "time slicing," I'm referring to two opposing methods that I've considered for time management:
There are clearly pros and cons to each method. Large slices allow more intense focus and less switching costs. Small slices allow more "balance" in each day and quicker responses to opportunities that come up (like for phone calls, meetings, etc.). And sometimes you don't have a choice: if you really need to meet with someone who can only meet on a day that's not your "meeting day," it will disrupt your rhythm. This decision also gets into the need to say no to various requests for help or meeting (or at least delays if not no's), which can often be painful to do. What do you do? What methods have you found useful in managing your time along this axis? |
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