The Lean Product Playbook: A Guide to Innovation with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback

Cecilie: I highly recommend this book for anyone managing products of any kind. The book focuses quite a lot on low-cost product discovery practices that any team can implement as well as solid quantitative strategies to measure success and meaningfully collect feedback. Over the years, I have referenced this book, again and again.

United States on Oct 02, 2023

Kindle Customer: It is a must have book for lean practitioner and the business

India on Sep 23, 2023

Arne Kloke: Inhaltlich finde ich die 5-Layer Pyramide und Product-Market-Fit Darstellung wirklich hilfreich. Sie lässt sich deutlich schneller als zb ein Business Model canvas im Alltag mal kurz darstellen. Dabei werden die Gedanken auch etwas anders sortiert durch das Thema Feature und UX. Somit füllt es komplementär die Toolbox. 4-5 Sterne
Leider ist die Aufmachung und das Druckbild des Buches alles andere als ein Hingucker. Die UX des Buches somit schlecht designed, eher so 1-2 Sterne.

Germany on Feb 26, 2023

DanielDaniel: Wow! This was the greatest education I received on becoming a true product expert.
I have learned so many things that can save startups from failure. This is THE entrepreneurship education you need to bring your ideas to life. I read it slowly and highlighted +500 ideas. It took me around 30 hours to finish. I loved it. And will apply it step by step.

Germany on Nov 04, 2022

Ruben: After reading "The Lean Startup", I did have a good idea on the lean movement and pattern that founders should follow to build theirs products. What I was lacking, however, is more of a step-by-step breakdown of what the process actually looks like starting from the idea to the first release. In his book, Dan covers a lot of those concepts with practical examples from identifying target customers to testing your MVP and iterating. I also found a lean product case study and agile tips in the end of the book incredibly helpful!
I highly recommend Dan's book to people who are after building great meaningful products and am very thankful to have come across it myself.

Canada on Apr 15, 2022

Poddy: Very easy to read, sometimes a bit dry and often its covering what is now, at least, very well known approaches. However, that said it also contain some key differences to other comparable books. I *think* I understand the theory around lean, good UX approach very well but sometimes it's hard to find actual practical descriptions of doing them in different stages of your customer / product development. What I am finding is that product development techniques are very well documented but customer development is still, even now, quite hard to vaguely described to where you should start. For this alone it gets 5 stars.

I don't think anything in this book will surprise you if you are vaguely in that startup / lean world (unless you think you are but aren't ;-) but it might just give you some pointers as to your blind spots and how to actually, practically carry them out. It did for me.

The other major factor I like is that he is very honest in how he has carried out the research and it isn't overblown or unachievable for most (i.e. just re-hashing the methods that the latest unicorn did which doesn't really translate very often - Uber, which is occasionally mentioned,...

United Kingdom on Jan 31, 2016

Justus Pendleton: I have worked as a director of engineering at a brand-name post-IPO tech company. I have worked with product managers and group product managers, including people we hired from Microsoft, Spotify, Google, etc. I worked there for 8 years, from before we had a single product manager, and watched the product management discipline evolve.

I didn't learn anything new from this book, since it captures (more or less) how we work. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have value. This is the best one-book summary of how a modern product manager should approach building a product. I would happily give this to every product management new hire. It captures the current zeitgeist and, especially in the first half of the book, provides the execution details that are sometimes missing from otherwise great but theory-laden product development books. (I'm looking at you Principles of Product Development Flow!!!)

I knocked off a star because the book has some flaws that could be rectified in a future edition. Some topics are covered so superficially you'd almost be better served just by a link to the relevant wikipedia page (this was most noticeable in the sections on execution covering...

United States on Jan 06, 2016

Product Mgr Guy: I’m a product manager who has been involved in the creation of a wide range of web and mobile products. Some have been great and some have bombed (unfortunately like many new products). The Lean Startup movement was a breakthrough for me and many others who work on technology products as it provided a framework for creating products that customers actually want. There are a lot of great Lean books that I’ve read including The Lean Startup, Running Lean, and The Four Steps to the Epiphany. The Lean Product Playbook is unique in that it takes the perspective of an entrepreneur or product manager and has a lot of very practical advice for putting the Lean principles into practice. The other Lean books provide some great information about Lean concepts, but I found that it was often hard to translate these concepts into real world actions. The Lean Product Playbook provides very practical advice for doing so. This book gives the reader a rare glimpse into what it takes to define a successful technology product. Most product leaders have to learn these lessons the hard way by just doing it and seeing what works and what doesn’t…..the school of hard knocks.

This book...

United States on Jun 01, 2015