In my opinion there are few things to keep in mind if you want to do stuff more lean:
- Keep stuff simple
- Keep stuff cheap
- Try to get feedback as soon as possible
- Iterate driven by that feedback
- Know when it’s good enough
Sounds easy. But if you really want to apply this principles in the harshness of life, keep this in mind:
- Keep stuff simple, but do not let usability die. There are simple and useful tools out there.
- Cheap is good, but sometimes you have to invest money for tools that are proven to be useful and let you focus on getting stuff done. It will pay off in the long term.
- Have no goals, but a vision. Don’t get stuck with ideas no one cares about. Keeping a vision lets you take the first step to get feedback by others. Then use that feedback to drive your vision. Setting goals up front and then stick to it will let you do things no one will care about. And that is not what you want, is it?
- Make giving feedback easy for others. Most of the time people will not even think about giving you feedback. Even less people will actually spent their precious time for it. And if it’s also hard to provide feedback, there is a zero chance you will actually get good advice by anybody.
- Make iteration easy. Measure your speed of iteration and do anything to get faster and faster. The faster you are, the sooner there will be feedback again.
- Build in a step in you workflow where you honestly ask yourself if it’s worth to start the next iteration. Often it will be more valuable to go on to the next point on your list instead of over-doing things.
