Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy

As an R&D manager, I've spent over 2 decades of my career talking to customers, analyzing the feedback, and using it to steer product design. I've seen customer-feedback processes work flawlessly an fail miserably. This book lays out a solid set of processes to do it right, and do it efficiently. It covers a lot of methods I've learned are critical, and I found a number of new ideas I'm eager to try. Whether you're new to customer engagement or seasoned, there is something in this book for you. I feel like the word "Lean" in the title is just trying to be trendy. Yes, the book has plenty of good advice throughout on how to be efficient collecting customer input, but 'Lean' ? Lastly, ideas like those in this book are most effective when everyone on the customer team is familiar with them. A few people that don't get the memo can disproportionally dilute the efforts of those that get it. If you're serious about building products that customer excitedly pay money for, get /everyone/ on the customer team to read this book.

Wow! I normally don't write reviews...but when I do it's because I desperately want to encourage others to give a book a chance. Lean Customer Development is an easy sale for Lean Startup lovers--of course we want to go deeper with the concepts. Lean Customer Development certainly does that. I've read many critical reviews, however, about Lean Startup's relevance to specific products not mentioned in the books. If that's you--you MUST read this book!I'm coming from a service industry and this book clarifies many questions that I had about the feasibility of having a "Minimum Viable Product" or MVP. What does that even mean to a lawyer? I've seen many people misconstrue the concept of the MVP and thus, I had my doubts about applying them to my profession. Although she still uses software development as the main focus for applying the principles, Alvarez addresses the flexibility of the MVP in a clear and enlightening fashion in Chapter 7, "What Kind of Minimum Viable Product Should I Build?" Powerful stuff! I feel I understand the concepts well enough to directly apply them to my law firm. Don't get me wrong: Eric's Reis' original work, Lean Startup, is a classic. Ash Maurya's Running Lean, also a part of this Lean series, is also essential reading. Lean Customer Development, however, easily led me to a pathway of applying Lean Startup principles to my situation. Her overall message about searching out, discerning, and applying customer behavior is truly eye-opening. Alvarez truly embodies why Lean Startup works--you give yourself the freedom to tailor a product/service that customers will actually pay to experience. Novel concept. I highly recommend you read this book before making a final decision about Lean Startup!

I work for one of the largest companies in the world. We have tons of ideas, too many. What we didn't have was a way to prove that people wanted the ideas. My boss challenged me to figure that out and through this book ( and a few others in the series like UX for lean) I realized we had all the pieces in the company already, we just needed to tie it all together.As an engineer I also used to take the mindset that only the consumer research folks in the company could talk to customers. Now I try and talk to 3 a week. Ideas are rarely the issue which is the focus of many other books.I came out of too many brainstorming sessions thinking what a waste of time. I replaced those with the alignment meetings mentioned in this book.

The book provides a good framework for how to engage consumers and ensure the products a company develops will meet needs. More specifically how to ensure your products are bought, used and promoted by the users.

Skimmed this product. Text appeared well organized. I ended up returning the book b/c I did not pursue the online class I bought it for.

If you're interested in the question and answer process around developing new products, this book collates some useful info into a single place. If you want a good portmanteau for types of mvps, there are many chapters devoted to these.Customer acquisition is not covered so if you're on the quest for customers and prospects, go elsewhere.

The appendix alone is with the price.I would complement this book with:"The Question Book" - Mikael Krigerus and Roman Tschappeler - exploring how to craft questions and a source of inspiration"The Graphic Facilitator's Guide" - Brandy Agerbeck - as a means of visualising your idea, hypotheses, target customer and MVP, especially in the early stages of stating and validating your hypotheses"The Sketchnote Handbook" and "The Sketchnote Handbook" - Mike Rohde - as a better means of capturing customer interviews and insights gained

We had Cindy on our podcast, The Entrepreneurs Library, to give a full run down of Lean Customer Development. She is an expert and the book is phenomenal! If you want to get a review from the author herself, check out Episode 6.You will want to pick it up immediately!!

Another terrific book in the lean series.Just come back to this book again, and again struck by how good it is. Really full of useful, actionable advice.

Very useful ! an amazing guide to implement your strategy. Step by step strategy to make your business flying

I've read quite a lot about the lean methodology. Yet, this book was the most eye opener of all. That's interesting given the fact that the term "lean" was not in the original title and the author did not even intend to write a "lean" book.So what you'll read in this book is not some advice designed to fit within an established movement, but a more honest and unadulterated advice formed out of the author's years of practical experience.

If anyone wants to know how to get early validation of ideas through user study, this is a must-read book for him/her

One of the best book I could read about customer development!