Spoiler alert: if you like short product cycles to deliver features that make your users very happy, you probably already know the answer.

We’ve just released a great guide to help startups getting started with delivering lean software. Get your copy here if you haven’t already.

Lean application delivery is the part of lean startup methodology that deals with how software products are built, how to prioritize, how to track and measure and how to automate every aspect of the pipeline.

It’s basically the marriage of DevOps and your workflow: be it agile, kanban, scrumban or, yes, waterfall.

Lean Delivery:
Lean DevOps?
Lean Agile?
KanbanOps?

As we say in the guide, this is about your journey to lean nirvana: a just-in-time flow to deliver value to your users.

Tools like Trello

Postits on a wall or simple tools like Trello are a great way to start lean. Trello is no frills, low features, but sucks when you need to do anything that transcends organizing simple tasks. But it does get a team collaborating on goals fast.

Github, Gitlab or Bitbucket can get you coding and building stuff… but what stuff? For whom? Why? How do you deliver it? How do you align with the business plan?

While marketing and sales are getting their job done with HubSpot, engineers and product people are fiddling with the gruesome toolchain.

Are the tools running your team, or the other way around? Aha, Jira and Pivotal Tracker can get you very far. Heck, so far that you probably could spend your whole life in just perfecting yourself with these tools. But that’s not how a startup works. There’s no time. You need to define products, get people building, and you probably would need at least 4 or 5 tools just to:

• Define product, align with goals and user value;

• Code, track, deploy;

• Automate, measure, iterate!

You need your product people to collaborate. And you need to automate everything. From goals, to ideas, to the DevOps pipeline. Just get your team to deliver software the way it’s meant to be: lovable products that iterate fast.

Batteries Inside

Our guide covers a few of our favorite topics in lean delivery, enough for a quick 10 minute read through. Here’s hint of some of the topics covered in the guide:

Define your flow before picking your tools

Or how to avoid bloating your startup with out-of-the-box, out-of-place processes from picking tools before you pick the process.

Delivering software is not just an engineering thing

Or how to build traction and make products your users love and business sells.

Emotion is a gauge

Be sensitive and measure emotion correctly.

Have a place for ideas

Or how to nurture and follow up on things that will bring value to your users.

MVP all the time: break down work

Or how to deliver value while keep your team and users motivated.

Isolate changes

Or how to be able to put a release together just-in-time instead of building really huge “develop” branches.

Measure your process, improve fast

Or how to keep your team delivering frequent releases.

Eat your own dog food

Or how to avoid delivering software that will bug your users down.

Avoid release anxiety

Or how to fine tune your iteration so that users, engineers and management is continuously happy.

It’s only done when it’s in production

Do I need to say more?

I hope this is good enough to get you started. There’s a lot of literature out there on how to build your startup to be lean and mean. Learn, measure, iterate!

Go get your Guide to Lean Delivery.