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Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy
How do you develop products that people will actually use and buy?
Customer development research is a method for validating your product and company ideas—before you waste months and millions on solving a problem no one needs.
Through customer development, you'll learn how your customers behave, what problems they need to solve, and what frustrates and delights them. Through a combination of open-ended interviewing and fast and flexible research techniques, this book provides rich insights that can take you beyond incremental improvements and to the "a-ha!" moments that inspire truly great products and sustainable businesses.
This book will serve as an intensely practical guide to customer development that will get you talking and discovering valuable insights within days.
Customer development research is a method for validating your product and company ideas—before you waste months and millions on solving a problem no one needs.
Through customer development, you'll learn how your customers behave, what problems they need to solve, and what frustrates and delights them. Through a combination of open-ended interviewing and fast and flexible research techniques, this book provides rich insights that can take you beyond incremental improvements and to the "a-ha!" moments that inspire truly great products and sustainable businesses.
This book will serve as an intensely practical guide to customer development that will get you talking and discovering valuable insights within days.
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First published January 1, 2014
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February 29, 2016
I read this book as a part of a study group at work. We discussed 2-3 chapters each week, which is a good pace for this book because you do get the most value out of it if you can implement some of the practices as you read the book. I am more convinced as a result of reading this book that customer development is critical to my line of work, and I think that this book provides very valuable and practical tools to implement a customer development program, both for new ventures and for established corporations.
If you are looking for something very intellectually challenging, however, this might not be it. There are no revelations that you'll find spectacular, but you will find a very useful framework and context, and a vocabulary to bring your team together to talk about certain ideas that you're probably all thinking about in isolation.
If you are looking for something very intellectually challenging, however, this might not be it. There are no revelations that you'll find spectacular, but you will find a very useful framework and context, and a vocabulary to bring your team together to talk about certain ideas that you're probably all thinking about in isolation.
May 1, 2016
Before reading this book I already read: The Lean Startup, Running Lean, UX for Lean Startup and I am half way through the Lean Analytics.
I found all O'Reilly books to be structured more like a framework some of them going so far to give you templates to use. They all reference the Lean start-up but adopt a more practical approach. While some part are valuable and really useful I usually find only 30-50% of the content to be really interesting. I would say that The Lean starup + Running Lean are quite enough. If you really want to go in depth go with The Lean Analytics also, but all the others, including Lean Customer Development don't really bring much new stuff.
I found all O'Reilly books to be structured more like a framework some of them going so far to give you templates to use. They all reference the Lean start-up but adopt a more practical approach. While some part are valuable and really useful I usually find only 30-50% of the content to be really interesting. I would say that The Lean starup + Running Lean are quite enough. If you really want to go in depth go with The Lean Analytics also, but all the others, including Lean Customer Development don't really bring much new stuff.
June 6, 2025
Pretty good. Very actionable. Good supplement/continuation to Ries’ The Lean Startup. Will be great to have as a resource to reference on my bookshelf.
Notes:
Customers are what make a product successful.
Customer development = reducing business risks by challenging assumptions on who customers are, what they need, and why and how they buy. Customer development parallels product development. Hypothesis (guess) driven approach. Shift your mindset to actively trying to poke holes in your ideas, prove yourself wrong, and invalidate your hypotheses. Five steps to lean customer development: (1) form a hypothesis, (2) find potential customers to talk to, (3) ask the right questions, (4) make sense of the answers, (5) figure out what to build to keep learning. If your hypothesis is wrong or even partly wrong you want to find out fast. Customer development answers the question “will they buy it.” User research = advocating for the user. Customer development = advocating for the company. Every hour spent on customer development saves HOURS of wasted time building.
Exercise:
(1) what are our assumptions? Make an Excel tracker of all assumptions and whether or not they’ve been validated. Use evolving questions list to validate these. See page 19 for list of prompts to help figure out assumptions.
(2) what is our problem hypothesis? “I believe [type of people] experience [type of problem] when doing [type of task].” Or “I believe [type of people] experience [type of problem] because of [limit or constraint]. Think about the who, what, where, when, why. Use Excel to track problem hypotheses. The more narrow your hypothesis the quicker you can prove/disprove it (“Is it easier to disprove that acts like water or that animals like water?”).
(3) what is our target customer profile? Focus on day one people (i.e. innovators/early adopters). Think about their traits/preferences on a spectrum (e.g. do they value cash or do they value time). See page 25 for a list of traits/preferences to consider.
Need to find earlyevangelists = people suffering the most severe pain, not necessarily early adopters = willing to take the risk on your unfinished, unproven product. These people will like to help others, sound smart, help fix things, and complain. See page 36 for an example of how to ask for introductions.
See page 60 for basic customer questions. These are the only scripted questions: (1) “Tell me about how you do ___ today…” (2) “Do you use any [tools] to help you get ____ done?” (3) “Forget what’s possible, if you could wave a magic wand and be able to do anything that you can’t do today, what would it be?” (4) “Last time you did ____, what were you doing right before you got started? Once you finished, what did you do afterward?” (5) “Is there anything else about ___ that I should have asked?” Each of these five scripted questions is a prompt/conversation starter. “It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want” - Steve Jobs. Customers’ current behavior is your competition, whether it works well or not. Abstract up one level to not narrow down your answers (e.g. don’t ask a parent how she delivers groceries to her house, ask how she feeds her family). Focus on the present, not the future; use prompts that yield actual responses instead of aspirational responses. Ask your customers to break down their procedures and realize that their second nature should be questioned.
In the first minute of the interview: (1) make the interviewee feel confident that she will be helpful, (2) explicitly say that you want her to do the talking, (3) get the interviewee talking. Have a scripted intro and outro, the rest shouldn’t be SCRIPTED. See page 88. Don’t say a word for the next 60 seconds after your intro. Don’t ask yes or no questions; open-ended answers only. Avoid asking leading questions. Summarize what the interviewee said back to them and dig deeper on anything you don’t understand or is surprising. Ignore what customers “want,” and focus on how they behave and what they “need”; focus on their problem, not their suggested solution. “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse” - Henry Ford.
In the last three minutes of the interviewee, you should: (1) offer some of your own time to the interviewee, (2) make the interviewee feel that she succeeded in helping you, (3) thank her personally for giving her time. See page 101 with example outro.
Maintain healthy skepticism. If someone says “maybe” treat that as a “no.” The best predictor of future behavior is current behavior. “Enough interviews” = you no longer hear things that surprise you.
Four components of a validated hypothesis: (1) customer confirms there is a problem, (2) customer believe the problem can and should be solved, (3) customer has actively invested (effort, time, money, learning curve) in trying to solve this problem, (4) customer doesn’t have circumstances beyond his role that prevent him from trying to fix the problem.
Each interview should tell you: (1) if I had a product today that completely solved this customers problem, do I see any obstacles that would prevent her from buying or using it? (2) how would she use it and fit it into her day to day activities? (3) what would it replace? (4) if she would not buy my solution, what are the specific reasons why not? Industry experience will lessen the number of interviews needed.
Don’t worry about a script/consistency with customer development because you’re learning about unique individuals.
The only proof that customers will pay for your product comes when customers pay for your product.
The goal of MVP is to maximize learning while minimizing risk and investment. “Minimum” = low investment and time, and should be able to explain in a couple of sentences. “Viable” = enough experience to show value to your customers, and providing enough information to prove/disprove a hypothesis. Some common MVP types are:
(1) pre-order MVP: describe the solution and have customers sign up and order before it is available. Their card is not charged until the product is available. For enterprise solutions, a letter of intent or agreement to roll out a pilot program may suffice. Think about giving preorder people a discount for maybe the first year or so. Every company should aim for a pre-order MVP in some form.
(2) audience building MVP: create a gathering place for your audience. Doesn’t validate whether people will pay for your solution or not, but allows you to gauge customer retention and participation.
(3) concierge MVP: manual effort is used to solve a customer’s problem. Customer is aware of this, and in exchange for your large investment of attention and time to them, they agree to provide you with lots of feedback. Allows you to give the experience of the product to customers before you actually build it. Not scalable.
(4) wizard of Oz MVP: provide a product that appears to be fully functional, but is actually powered by manual human effort. Not scalable.
(5) single use case MVP: focuses on a single problem or task. Helps you validate features as you go, using customer demand and adoption. Can be good to test new features for an existing website.
(6) other peoples product MVP: use existing solutions and mask them to be your own to validate a new hypothesis before you go and build everything. Similar to Wizard of Oz MVP.
There is no point where you should stop doing customer development; you will benefit from continuously learning and validating.
Complaining is a sign of interest. It shows the customer values the experience enough that they want to improve it.
Ask “how disappointed would you be if you could no longer use our product,” as opposed to the positive version of “how satisfied are you with using our product.” Reach out to and learn from the customers who say “very disappointed.” Those will be the most passionate. Use their same language. Enthusiastic customers will talk about benefits more than features. Words that customers choose to describe the product can help you sell more of it.
Focus should be on making your customers feel awesome, not on telling customers that your product is awesome.
Explain to customers and make it clear the feedback stage that you’re at.
Use both: ask the customer to show you how they use your product, and also show and tell the customer how to use your product while being didactic for them to clearly agree or disagree with you.
When customers ask for new features, restate their description and ask them why/what this would allow them to do. You need to understand and solve the underlying problem, as you may get many different requests from customers that all have the same underlying problem.
See page 195 for questions to use:
“Tell me about the last time you ___.”
“If you could wave a magic wand and change anything about how you ____, what would it be?”
“What tools do you use for ____?”
“When you started using [tool], what benefit were you expecting?”
“How often do you ____? Let’s say, how many times in the past month?”
“When this occurs, how much additional time or money does it cost you or your company?”
“Who else experiences this problem?”
“When you do (or use) ____, is there anything you do immediately before to prepare?”
“When you do (or use) ____, is there anything you do immediately afterwards?”
“Would you be willing to help us by participating in user research or beta testing?”
“When you use [our product], what’s the first thing you do with it?”
“What’s the most useful thing that you regularly do with our product?”
“If you had [requested feature] today, how would that make your life better?”
“Other customers have told me they experience [problem]…”
Notes:
Customers are what make a product successful.
Customer development = reducing business risks by challenging assumptions on who customers are, what they need, and why and how they buy. Customer development parallels product development. Hypothesis (guess) driven approach. Shift your mindset to actively trying to poke holes in your ideas, prove yourself wrong, and invalidate your hypotheses. Five steps to lean customer development: (1) form a hypothesis, (2) find potential customers to talk to, (3) ask the right questions, (4) make sense of the answers, (5) figure out what to build to keep learning. If your hypothesis is wrong or even partly wrong you want to find out fast. Customer development answers the question “will they buy it.” User research = advocating for the user. Customer development = advocating for the company. Every hour spent on customer development saves HOURS of wasted time building.
Exercise:
(1) what are our assumptions? Make an Excel tracker of all assumptions and whether or not they’ve been validated. Use evolving questions list to validate these. See page 19 for list of prompts to help figure out assumptions.
(2) what is our problem hypothesis? “I believe [type of people] experience [type of problem] when doing [type of task].” Or “I believe [type of people] experience [type of problem] because of [limit or constraint]. Think about the who, what, where, when, why. Use Excel to track problem hypotheses. The more narrow your hypothesis the quicker you can prove/disprove it (“Is it easier to disprove that acts like water or that animals like water?”).
(3) what is our target customer profile? Focus on day one people (i.e. innovators/early adopters). Think about their traits/preferences on a spectrum (e.g. do they value cash or do they value time). See page 25 for a list of traits/preferences to consider.
Need to find earlyevangelists = people suffering the most severe pain, not necessarily early adopters = willing to take the risk on your unfinished, unproven product. These people will like to help others, sound smart, help fix things, and complain. See page 36 for an example of how to ask for introductions.
See page 60 for basic customer questions. These are the only scripted questions: (1) “Tell me about how you do ___ today…” (2) “Do you use any [tools] to help you get ____ done?” (3) “Forget what’s possible, if you could wave a magic wand and be able to do anything that you can’t do today, what would it be?” (4) “Last time you did ____, what were you doing right before you got started? Once you finished, what did you do afterward?” (5) “Is there anything else about ___ that I should have asked?” Each of these five scripted questions is a prompt/conversation starter. “It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want” - Steve Jobs. Customers’ current behavior is your competition, whether it works well or not. Abstract up one level to not narrow down your answers (e.g. don’t ask a parent how she delivers groceries to her house, ask how she feeds her family). Focus on the present, not the future; use prompts that yield actual responses instead of aspirational responses. Ask your customers to break down their procedures and realize that their second nature should be questioned.
In the first minute of the interview: (1) make the interviewee feel confident that she will be helpful, (2) explicitly say that you want her to do the talking, (3) get the interviewee talking. Have a scripted intro and outro, the rest shouldn’t be SCRIPTED. See page 88. Don’t say a word for the next 60 seconds after your intro. Don’t ask yes or no questions; open-ended answers only. Avoid asking leading questions. Summarize what the interviewee said back to them and dig deeper on anything you don’t understand or is surprising. Ignore what customers “want,” and focus on how they behave and what they “need”; focus on their problem, not their suggested solution. “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse” - Henry Ford.
In the last three minutes of the interviewee, you should: (1) offer some of your own time to the interviewee, (2) make the interviewee feel that she succeeded in helping you, (3) thank her personally for giving her time. See page 101 with example outro.
Maintain healthy skepticism. If someone says “maybe” treat that as a “no.” The best predictor of future behavior is current behavior. “Enough interviews” = you no longer hear things that surprise you.
Four components of a validated hypothesis: (1) customer confirms there is a problem, (2) customer believe the problem can and should be solved, (3) customer has actively invested (effort, time, money, learning curve) in trying to solve this problem, (4) customer doesn’t have circumstances beyond his role that prevent him from trying to fix the problem.
Each interview should tell you: (1) if I had a product today that completely solved this customers problem, do I see any obstacles that would prevent her from buying or using it? (2) how would she use it and fit it into her day to day activities? (3) what would it replace? (4) if she would not buy my solution, what are the specific reasons why not? Industry experience will lessen the number of interviews needed.
Don’t worry about a script/consistency with customer development because you’re learning about unique individuals.
The only proof that customers will pay for your product comes when customers pay for your product.
The goal of MVP is to maximize learning while minimizing risk and investment. “Minimum” = low investment and time, and should be able to explain in a couple of sentences. “Viable” = enough experience to show value to your customers, and providing enough information to prove/disprove a hypothesis. Some common MVP types are:
(1) pre-order MVP: describe the solution and have customers sign up and order before it is available. Their card is not charged until the product is available. For enterprise solutions, a letter of intent or agreement to roll out a pilot program may suffice. Think about giving preorder people a discount for maybe the first year or so. Every company should aim for a pre-order MVP in some form.
(2) audience building MVP: create a gathering place for your audience. Doesn’t validate whether people will pay for your solution or not, but allows you to gauge customer retention and participation.
(3) concierge MVP: manual effort is used to solve a customer’s problem. Customer is aware of this, and in exchange for your large investment of attention and time to them, they agree to provide you with lots of feedback. Allows you to give the experience of the product to customers before you actually build it. Not scalable.
(4) wizard of Oz MVP: provide a product that appears to be fully functional, but is actually powered by manual human effort. Not scalable.
(5) single use case MVP: focuses on a single problem or task. Helps you validate features as you go, using customer demand and adoption. Can be good to test new features for an existing website.
(6) other peoples product MVP: use existing solutions and mask them to be your own to validate a new hypothesis before you go and build everything. Similar to Wizard of Oz MVP.
There is no point where you should stop doing customer development; you will benefit from continuously learning and validating.
Complaining is a sign of interest. It shows the customer values the experience enough that they want to improve it.
Ask “how disappointed would you be if you could no longer use our product,” as opposed to the positive version of “how satisfied are you with using our product.” Reach out to and learn from the customers who say “very disappointed.” Those will be the most passionate. Use their same language. Enthusiastic customers will talk about benefits more than features. Words that customers choose to describe the product can help you sell more of it.
Focus should be on making your customers feel awesome, not on telling customers that your product is awesome.
Explain to customers and make it clear the feedback stage that you’re at.
Use both: ask the customer to show you how they use your product, and also show and tell the customer how to use your product while being didactic for them to clearly agree or disagree with you.
When customers ask for new features, restate their description and ask them why/what this would allow them to do. You need to understand and solve the underlying problem, as you may get many different requests from customers that all have the same underlying problem.
See page 195 for questions to use:
“Tell me about the last time you ___.”
“If you could wave a magic wand and change anything about how you ____, what would it be?”
“What tools do you use for ____?”
“When you started using [tool], what benefit were you expecting?”
“How often do you ____? Let’s say, how many times in the past month?”
“When this occurs, how much additional time or money does it cost you or your company?”
“Who else experiences this problem?”
“When you do (or use) ____, is there anything you do immediately before to prepare?”
“When you do (or use) ____, is there anything you do immediately afterwards?”
“Would you be willing to help us by participating in user research or beta testing?”
“When you use [our product], what’s the first thing you do with it?”
“What’s the most useful thing that you regularly do with our product?”
“If you had [requested feature] today, how would that make your life better?”
“Other customers have told me they experience [problem]…”
September 30, 2021
This book will help to understand - how to validate products - where to start - how to find customers without a finished product - how do customers make decisions, spend money, and measure product value - how to understand that the hypothesis is confirmed
and much more!
I'm sure that I will come back to this book more than once.
There are few cool thoughts from the book:
"• To get the customer talking, ask the top five consumer development questions, then move on to follow-up questions.
• Ask questions that require detailed answers so that clients do not limit themselves to superficial considerations.
• Find out what customers are doing today. Their behavior today is your competence.
• Go up one level to see the problem in a broader context.
• Focus not on the future, but on today's customer behavior. Don't ask if he's going to do something. Refer to the recent past and ask the client to tell you when and how they did it the last time, or how many times they did it in the last month.
• Beware of the client's mental blocks (he may not perceive the problem as such; think that it cannot be solved; perhaps he has limited resources or is afraid to violate socio-cultural prohibitions). Ask questions to help remove the blockage.
• Find out who else, besides the client, is involved in decision making (family members, managers, friends, etc.)."
and much more!
I'm sure that I will come back to this book more than once.
There are few cool thoughts from the book:
"• To get the customer talking, ask the top five consumer development questions, then move on to follow-up questions.
• Ask questions that require detailed answers so that clients do not limit themselves to superficial considerations.
• Find out what customers are doing today. Their behavior today is your competence.
• Go up one level to see the problem in a broader context.
• Focus not on the future, but on today's customer behavior. Don't ask if he's going to do something. Refer to the recent past and ask the client to tell you when and how they did it the last time, or how many times they did it in the last month.
• Beware of the client's mental blocks (he may not perceive the problem as such; think that it cannot be solved; perhaps he has limited resources or is afraid to violate socio-cultural prohibitions). Ask questions to help remove the blockage.
• Find out who else, besides the client, is involved in decision making (family members, managers, friends, etc.)."
June 25, 2018
This book offers a view of how companies of any size can practice deep customer development in parallel with product development. It is full of actionable steps to make the most out of every conversation, user test, and feedback session.
This book is not only for startups but also for companies.
This book is not only for startups but also for companies.
June 8, 2014
An excellent how to book about customer development, interviews, validation of hypothesis and Minimum Viable Products.
March 10, 2023
For me, all the concepts and points that this book discussed are not new. Lots of points were brought from Eric Ries's books and somewhere else which I have read already.
March 14, 2021
Definitely useful for anyone in business who REALLY WANTS to listen to customers and appreciate the value and knowledge any support staff and team brings to the company yet is so very often simply dismissed or ignored.
March 14, 2021
I loved the book. If one is very much involved in customer development, this might be too basic. But if not - author provides great overview, tips and tricks, also examples on what customer development is in early stages and also in mature companies, including advices how to involve more of organization into this process. A must read!
May 21, 2020
Contains valuable ideas about how to better understand your customers and thus build better products. However, the distinction between *customer* development and *product* development seemed artificial. This book essentially takes a small part of the the overall product development process and zooms way in.
There is a lot of information that is repeat of books I have read prior to this one (i.e. Lean Startup, Running Lean, Inspired) so it was harder to find this one super valuable. Perhaps if I had read these books in a different order, my opinion would be different.
Overall, a book with some valuable nuggets but with way too much detail and repeated information.
There is a lot of information that is repeat of books I have read prior to this one (i.e. Lean Startup, Running Lean, Inspired) so it was harder to find this one super valuable. Perhaps if I had read these books in a different order, my opinion would be different.
Overall, a book with some valuable nuggets but with way too much detail and repeated information.
Read
August 2, 2015Useful if sometimes obvious
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.
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.
January 2, 2025
(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)
Вся суть книги укладывается в одну фразу - проводите качественные интервью с потенциальными клиентами. Данная техника в маркетинге не нова и можно утверждать, что как количественные, так и качественные исследования являются основами маркетинга. Тут нужно отметить, что любой тип коммуникации с клиентами лучше, чем их полное отсутствие. Главное чтобы клиенты говорили не то, что как они думают, компания хочет от них услышать, а то, что они в действительности думают, а ещё лучше, что они планирует сделать. В общем, вот и вся суть книги. Да, автор пишет про "инноваторов", т.е. про ту категорию покупателей, кто первыми пробуют новинку, но опять же, это основы маркетинга.
"Ранневангелисты подробно расскажут вам о своих проблемах, потребностях и многом другом. Они купят уродливый, плохо работающий бета-продукт и засыплют вас электронными письмами с подробным описанием неполадок и кучей предложений по их устранению. А затем они порекомендуют вас и ваш товар всем своим знакомым. Они сделают это не ради вас. Просто их мучит проблема, которую они хотят решить."
В дальнейшем книга начинает напоминать 1001 совет о том, как нужно проводить качественные исследования или можно это определить как "примеры из практики".
"Если хотите получить ответы на вопросы и контактную информацию, вы должны сами идти к людям."
"«Сколько платить за интервью?», – спросите вы.
Отвечаю однозначно: нисколько."
"Наблюдение «в естественной среде обитания» – самый надежный метод развития потребителей.
<...>
Если вас интересует, как именно потребитель что-то делает, он может не только рассказать об этом, но и показать."
В общем, книгу прочесть можно, но я сомневаюсь, что практики или даже теоретики найдут в этой книге что-то новое и интересное для себя.
The whole point of the book is summed up in one phrase - conduct qualitative interviews with potential clients. This technique in marketing is not new, and it can be argued that both quantitative and qualitative research are the foundations of marketing. The thing to note here is that any type of customer communication is better than no communication at all. The most important thing is for customers to say not what they think the company wants them to say but what they actually think, or better yet, what they plan to do. Anyway, that's the whole point of the book. Yes, the author writes about innovators, i.e., that category of customers who are the first to try a new product, but again, this is marketing basics.
“Early-evangelists will tell you in detail about their problems, needs, and more. They'll buy an ugly, poorly performing beta product and flood you with emails detailing the problems and tons of suggestions on how to fix them. And then they'll recommend you and your product to everyone they know. They won't do it for you. It's just that they're plagued by a problem they want to solve.”
Going forward, the book begins to resemble 1001 tips on how qualitative research should be done or one could define this as case studies.
“If you want answers to questions and contact information, you have to go to people yourself.”
“'How much to pay for an interview?”, you ask.
My answer is unequivocally: nothing.”
“Observation 'in the natural habitat' is the most reliable method of developing consumers.
<...>
If you're interested in exactly how a consumer does something, they can not only tell you about it, they can show you.”
In general, the book can be read, but I doubt that practitioners or even theorists will find something new and interesting for themselves in this book.
Вся суть книги укладывается в одну фразу - проводите качественные интервью с потенциальными клиентами. Данная техника в маркетинге не нова и можно утверждать, что как количественные, так и качественные исследования являются основами маркетинга. Тут нужно отметить, что любой тип коммуникации с клиентами лучше, чем их полное отсутствие. Главное чтобы клиенты говорили не то, что как они думают, компания хочет от них услышать, а то, что они в действительности думают, а ещё лучше, что они планирует сделать. В общем, вот и вся суть книги. Да, автор пишет про "инноваторов", т.е. про ту категорию покупателей, кто первыми пробуют новинку, но опять же, это основы маркетинга.
"Ранневангелисты подробно расскажут вам о своих проблемах, потребностях и многом другом. Они купят уродливый, плохо работающий бета-продукт и засыплют вас электронными письмами с подробным описанием неполадок и кучей предложений по их устранению. А затем они порекомендуют вас и ваш товар всем своим знакомым. Они сделают это не ради вас. Просто их мучит проблема, которую они хотят решить."
В дальнейшем книга начинает напоминать 1001 совет о том, как нужно проводить качественные исследования или можно это определить как "примеры из практики".
"Если хотите получить ответы на вопросы и контактную информацию, вы должны сами идти к людям."
"«Сколько платить за интервью?», – спросите вы.
Отвечаю однозначно: нисколько."
"Наблюдение «в естественной среде обитания» – самый надежный метод развития потребителей.
<...>
Если вас интересует, как именно потребитель что-то делает, он может не только рассказать об этом, но и показать."
В общем, книгу прочесть можно, но я сомневаюсь, что практики или даже теоретики найдут в этой книге что-то новое и интересное для себя.
The whole point of the book is summed up in one phrase - conduct qualitative interviews with potential clients. This technique in marketing is not new, and it can be argued that both quantitative and qualitative research are the foundations of marketing. The thing to note here is that any type of customer communication is better than no communication at all. The most important thing is for customers to say not what they think the company wants them to say but what they actually think, or better yet, what they plan to do. Anyway, that's the whole point of the book. Yes, the author writes about innovators, i.e., that category of customers who are the first to try a new product, but again, this is marketing basics.
“Early-evangelists will tell you in detail about their problems, needs, and more. They'll buy an ugly, poorly performing beta product and flood you with emails detailing the problems and tons of suggestions on how to fix them. And then they'll recommend you and your product to everyone they know. They won't do it for you. It's just that they're plagued by a problem they want to solve.”
Going forward, the book begins to resemble 1001 tips on how qualitative research should be done or one could define this as case studies.
“If you want answers to questions and contact information, you have to go to people yourself.”
“'How much to pay for an interview?”, you ask.
My answer is unequivocally: nothing.”
“Observation 'in the natural habitat' is the most reliable method of developing consumers.
<...>
If you're interested in exactly how a consumer does something, they can not only tell you about it, they can show you.”
In general, the book can be read, but I doubt that practitioners or even theorists will find something new and interesting for themselves in this book.
October 31, 2019
О ЧЕМ КНИГА:
К сожалению многие предприниматели при развитии бизнеса идут не от клиента, а от продукта и в итоге могут создать то, что не нужно клиентам вообще. Автор рассказывает как тестировать гипотезы о том, нужно ли клиентам то, что вы хотите создать. Даже когда вы исследовали рынок и поняли, что у потребителей существует боль и есть спрос на ваш продукт, то нужно разбираться какой именно продукт и с какими свойствами им нужен. Поэтому в процессе развития потребителей(customer development) главное это проверка обоснованности ваших гипотез. Альварес предлагает простую и понятную методику как это сделать.
КАКАЯ БЫЛА ЦЕЛЬ ЧТЕНИЯ:
Разобраться в правильном подходе к методу Customer development.
ГЛАВНЫЕ ВЫВОДЫ:
- Время, потраченное на общение с потребителями - лучшее вложение на этапе создания продукта.
- «Бережливое развитие потребителей включает пять составляющих:
• разработку гипотезы;
• поиск потенциальных потребителей, с которыми вы будете вести переговоры;
• постановку правильных вопросов;
• правильное истолкование ответов на эти вопросы;
• понимание того, какой продукт вам нужен, с учетом полученной информации.»
- Все люди разные, но законы психологии универсальны. Всех нас мотивируют три вещи:
• нам нравится помогать другим;
• нам нравится казаться умными;
• нам нравится решать проблемы.
Поэтому многие готовы потратить свое время на беседу о нашем продукте.
- Признаки подтверждающейся гипотезы
На то, что гипотеза подтверждается, обычно указывают следующие признаки.
• Потребитель признает наличие проблемы или болевой точки.
• Потребитель считает, что проблема может и должна быть решена.
• Потребитель активно расходует на решение проблемы ресурсы (силы, время, деньги, затраты на обучение).
• Потребитель полностью контролирует ситуацию; ничто не мешает ему решить проблему или устранить болевую точку.
ЧТО Я БУДУ ПРИМЕНЯТЬ:
- Стандартный список вопросов для проведения customer development.
ЕЩЕ НА ЭТУ ТЕМУ:
Роб Фитцпатрик «Спроси маму»
К сожалению многие предприниматели при развитии бизнеса идут не от клиента, а от продукта и в итоге могут создать то, что не нужно клиентам вообще. Автор рассказывает как тестировать гипотезы о том, нужно ли клиентам то, что вы хотите создать. Даже когда вы исследовали рынок и поняли, что у потребителей существует боль и есть спрос на ваш продукт, то нужно разбираться какой именно продукт и с какими свойствами им нужен. Поэтому в процессе развития потребителей(customer development) главное это проверка обоснованности ваших гипотез. Альварес предлагает простую и понятную методику как это сделать.
КАКАЯ БЫЛА ЦЕЛЬ ЧТЕНИЯ:
Разобраться в правильном подходе к методу Customer development.
ГЛАВНЫЕ ВЫВОДЫ:
- Время, потраченное на общение с потребителями - лучшее вложение на этапе создания продукта.
- «Бережливое развитие потребителей включает пять составляющих:
• разработку гипотезы;
• поиск потенциальных потребителей, с которыми вы будете вести переговоры;
• постановку правильных вопросов;
• правильное истолкование ответов на эти вопросы;
• понимание того, какой продукт вам нужен, с учетом полученной информации.»
- Все люди разные, но законы психологии универсальны. Всех нас мотивируют три вещи:
• нам нравится помогать другим;
• нам нравится казаться умными;
• нам нравится решать проблемы.
Поэтому многие готовы потратить свое время на беседу о нашем продукте.
- Признаки подтверждающейся гипотезы
На то, что гипотеза подтверждается, обычно указывают следующие признаки.
• Потребитель признает наличие проблемы или болевой точки.
• Потребитель считает, что проблема может и должна быть решена.
• Потребитель активно расходует на решение проблемы ресурсы (силы, время, деньги, затраты на обучение).
• Потребитель полностью контролирует ситуацию; ничто не мешает ему решить проблему или устранить болевую точку.
ЧТО Я БУДУ ПРИМЕНЯТЬ:
- Стандартный список вопросов для проведения customer development.
ЕЩЕ НА ЭТУ ТЕМУ:
Роб Фитцпатрик «Спроси маму»
September 19, 2022
Lean Customer Development is an essential book that will help you in your product discovery journey. The book shows you the importance of customer development, what should you do to start customer development practice, who should you be talking to, what should you be learning, how to analyze the results, and what MVP to build to test your hypotheses. The author shares many examples of how to do certain things such as interview questions, interviewee reach-out templates on LinkedIn, and many more. I also find the author’s real-life story on customer development very helpful for me to understand how customer development is done and what should I avoid next time! Though, one thing that I feel missing from this book is a section dedicated to sharing some tips on how to get company buy-in to invest in customer development.
I rate this book as 5 / 5. The book delivers what it promises, to help me as a person who is new to product discovery, to understand the right mindset and how to do customer development. I recommend this book to everyone who is seeking to start learning how to understand your customer and market needs with the goal to improve your odds of making a good decision that could benefit your customers and business. Hopefully, this review helps you to decide whether this is a good book for you!
I rate this book as 5 / 5. The book delivers what it promises, to help me as a person who is new to product discovery, to understand the right mindset and how to do customer development. I recommend this book to everyone who is seeking to start learning how to understand your customer and market needs with the goal to improve your odds of making a good decision that could benefit your customers and business. Hopefully, this review helps you to decide whether this is a good book for you!
December 21, 2019
Good instructional book on how to carry out the iterative process of speaking to your potential customers to figure out what kind of product to build, then building it, getting more feedback, etc.
It focuses on the practical and nitty-gritty; nothing glamorous but really helpful when you’re in the process.
The book consists of 9 chapters, roughly covering the following (which should give some idea of the exact contents):
1: Facts supporting customer development
2: Assumptions, problem hypothesis, target customer profile
3: Find target customer, get them to talk with you
4: Types of questions that identify customer’s existing behaviours, pain points, constraints (and why questions work)
5: Successful customer interviews: how to introduce, get people talking, get beyond shallow answers about customer behaviour and needs
6: Synthesize valuable insights you’ve gained and use them to drive product and business decisions
7: Different kinds of MVPs and what situation each works well in
8: Set expectations and reassure customers
9: Fitting customer development into your everyday routine
It focuses on the practical and nitty-gritty; nothing glamorous but really helpful when you’re in the process.
The book consists of 9 chapters, roughly covering the following (which should give some idea of the exact contents):
1: Facts supporting customer development
2: Assumptions, problem hypothesis, target customer profile
3: Find target customer, get them to talk with you
4: Types of questions that identify customer’s existing behaviours, pain points, constraints (and why questions work)
5: Successful customer interviews: how to introduce, get people talking, get beyond shallow answers about customer behaviour and needs
6: Synthesize valuable insights you’ve gained and use them to drive product and business decisions
7: Different kinds of MVPs and what situation each works well in
8: Set expectations and reassure customers
9: Fitting customer development into your everyday routine
May 10, 2023
In today's rapidly changing and highly competitive markets, product discovery is essential for any organization looking to save time and money while developing a product that adds real value to customers. In her book, "Lean Customer Development," Cindy Alvarez presents a practical and insightful approach to applying lean customer development.
The book outlines a straightforward process for formulating hypotheses, validating or invalidating them through interviews and prototypes, and learning more about customers, the market, and the problems to be solved. Alvarez emphasizes the importance of customer discovery and validation, which enables organizations to develop a deep understanding of their customer's needs and build products that truly solve their problems.
"Lean Customer Development" is a valuable resource for anyone looking to navigate the complex landscape of customer problem spaces and build a successful product. Whether you're a startup founder, product manager, or marketer, this book provides a clear and actionable guide to developing a customer-centric approach to product development.
The book outlines a straightforward process for formulating hypotheses, validating or invalidating them through interviews and prototypes, and learning more about customers, the market, and the problems to be solved. Alvarez emphasizes the importance of customer discovery and validation, which enables organizations to develop a deep understanding of their customer's needs and build products that truly solve their problems.
"Lean Customer Development" is a valuable resource for anyone looking to navigate the complex landscape of customer problem spaces and build a successful product. Whether you're a startup founder, product manager, or marketer, this book provides a clear and actionable guide to developing a customer-centric approach to product development.
December 29, 2019
This book consists of two major parts:
1. 2/3 is about "customer development". Which is a strange mix of requirements gathering/validation and a lot of psychology (the author is actually a psychology major). It's useful if you are shy to talk with people (not necessary customers) but too general.
2. The second part is about MVPs and use of them both in startups and enterprises. Here the use cases are more close to real product development and interesting. It's just a reality check when you see a Kinect use case (the books is from 2013) as a "success" for Lean story :). There is no methodology - Agile, Lean, etc., which guarantee the success.
1. 2/3 is about "customer development". Which is a strange mix of requirements gathering/validation and a lot of psychology (the author is actually a psychology major). It's useful if you are shy to talk with people (not necessary customers) but too general.
2. The second part is about MVPs and use of them both in startups and enterprises. Here the use cases are more close to real product development and interesting. It's just a reality check when you see a Kinect use case (the books is from 2013) as a "success" for Lean story :). There is no methodology - Agile, Lean, etc., which guarantee the success.
October 18, 2020
It is quite good, I wish I had it years ago - I wouldn't make that many errors being a product owner.
But well, no one does it in a perfect way since day one.
Some of the things are idealized, some of the suggestions are quite difficult to follow when you are the company of 3 but still, I wish I've read it some 4-5 years ago ;)
It is of use for product people and basically everyone working in startups.
Keeping it on my 're-read' list for future references, the section on interview questions & user perception is priceless.
But well, no one does it in a perfect way since day one.
Some of the things are idealized, some of the suggestions are quite difficult to follow when you are the company of 3 but still, I wish I've read it some 4-5 years ago ;)
It is of use for product people and basically everyone working in startups.
Keeping it on my 're-read' list for future references, the section on interview questions & user perception is priceless.
January 20, 2021
It does not offer nothing really new, but although it feels as yet-another-lean-hype-book, then it starts giving really useful tips and how-to ideas and advice.
Well researched, full of testimonials and real-world case scenarios.
Not a must-read, but interesting to those who are seeking to find new ways of inserting research in a new company.
It is most useful for those is startup or innovation environments, where there is no products, but it does acknowledge large and established companies and how to make this work in those environment.
Well researched, full of testimonials and real-world case scenarios.
Not a must-read, but interesting to those who are seeking to find new ways of inserting research in a new company.
It is most useful for those is startup or innovation environments, where there is no products, but it does acknowledge large and established companies and how to make this work in those environment.
June 12, 2018
I was recommended this book by a user experience researcher for a midsize company. I currently work for a small start up, so this book spoke to both of us! By far my favorite book in this LEAN series. Alvarez gives great examples, questions and doesn’t waste your time. It’s amazing that she can write about general situations we all experience with such distinct and specific helpfulness. This is a book I would want to put on my shelf in my office.
May 19, 2019
It is a great book for the ones wanting to learn customer development. Full of examples and in the apendix, several question that can be used in interviews. Most of the time organizations want to conduct research to prove the point they already have. That’s not the way to go. You have to be agnostic about customer opinion.
January 23, 2021
An excellent playbook to help product managers, and indeed product companies, actually listen to their customers and build what they need, not what they (or sales!) ask for. Plenty of good, actionable advice for PMs, CS and Sales teams. Recommended to anyone struggling to get interviews off the ground, or where discovery is an alien concept
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July 24, 2022I opted out of rating this book because I don’t think it would be fair. This book is super practical and goes i into great detail about recruiting customers for interviews and how to conduct those interviews. I have learned all of this from my lead designer already, so it was more of a refresher than new techniques
August 17, 2022
It's a good read in the sense that it's difficult to write an entire book about this topic. One can certainly compact all the insights in an article. However the importance is that this is not much talked about topic, even though it's the crux of building any product. To summarise, a marketer first needs to understand customer challenges and problem solve them.
January 9, 2019
Practical guide to customer development with plenty of examples and tips. A must for product discovery and user research.
It covers the whole lifecycle of a product from idea to established businesses.
It covers the whole lifecycle of a product from idea to established businesses.
January 31, 2019
Some sound advice on connecting with your customers. I particularly liked the focus on validating your hypothesis by interviewing potential customers. There are some good tips on how to find your target customers and how to interview them.
September 27, 2019
It's a great book for starting a startup, obviously after reading Lean Startup. It gives the tools for managing the most critical parts at the beginning, I recommend to follow it's instructions with a team of 2 or 4 people
December 13, 2020
Practical advice on how to find what customers need. The first couple of chapters are nothing new but after that the recommendations are the value that the book adds. Lots of good questions in the appendix.
February 22, 2017
un buen resumen de tecnicas de validacion, como detectar early adopters y ver sus necesidades
November 27, 2017
Хорошая книга. Для неспециалиста можно много подчерпнуть, но в рамках достаточно узкого профиля. Много внимания уделено деталям и советам.
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