Steve Blank’s “Customer Development Process” is meant for any startup launching a new B2B product, from a small team starting in a garage to an intrapreneurial team in a large corporation
The Customer Development Process is intended to help teams with discovering their markets, locating their first customers, validating their assumptions, and growing their business. What follows is a brief description of the Customer Development Process and my observations on implementing the Engineering strategy for the same.
Customer Development Process
The Customer Development model is designed to solve the problems of using the traditional Product Development model to manage and pace all the non-Engineering activities. The model separates out all the customer-related activities in the early stage of a company into their own processes. Customer Development is not a substitute for the activities occurring in the Product Development group. Instead, Customer Development and Product Development are parallel processes.
The Customer Development model consists of four well-defined steps: Customer Discovery, Customer Validation, Customer Creation, and Company Building. Customer Discovery focuses on understanding customer problems and needs, Customer Validation on developing a sales model that can be replicated, Customer Creation on creating and driving end user demand, and Company Building on transitioning the organization from one designed for learning and discovery to a well-oiled machine engineered for execution.
Customer Development Team
The Customer Development team (could be nothing more than a single founder, at first) is engaged in customer-centric activities outside the building, and is responsible for getting out and talking to customers. The Customer Vision team should be able to articulately & passionately talk about the business/personal importance of your new product/company. The Customer Execution Team may need to borrow technical resources from the Product Development team to listen or talk to customers to test “problems” that your company elucidated in its business plan. Your biggest challenge is going to be finding people for the Customer Development team, when that team needs to grow.
Product Development Team
The Product Development team (could be 5 engineers, at first) is focused on internal product-centric activities, and has ownership for the Product/Technical vision and for building and developing the product. The Product/Technical Vision team should be able to describe the architecture and technology advantages to the customer, while interpreting their technical requests for the Customer Execution team. The Product/Technical Execution team is responsible for building and shipping the product. The Product/Technical Vision team and the Product/Technical Execution team can be led by the same person. In cases where the responsibilities are split between two people, the head of Product/Technical Execution partners with the keeper of the Product/Technical vision.
Engineering Strategy
A startup engineering strategy for the first two product releases should be:
- Execute against the technical vision of the founders, modified by customer feedback in discovery and validation
- Develop and then execute a “fast to market” plan (rather than first to market) that gets a first release (along with the vision of the product for the next 18 months) in the hands of the earlyvangelists as quickly as possible
- Use feedback from earlyvangelists who bought the product to flesh out the specification for the next release for a broader customer base
It can be hard to articulate a powerful vision/mission when there are many ambiguities, and you don’t yet have real products serving real customers. You should try and describe what your product might evolve to, how the technology may develop, what needs it might fulfill for your customers and how your product might fit in the market. While a company’s vision/mission may change subtly over a period of months, or dramatically over a week, it is not wise to change it with the latest market or product fad.
While it is important to have a diverse and inclusive culture in your team, it is critical that the initial members have a common set of values. You shouldn’t hesitate to part with people who are not a good fit for your culture. Having said that, you would need to design your organization around the talent of the people available.
Engineering Org
What a startup needs as the leader of the Engineering group is someone with a keen product vision, an unerring eye for a minimal feature set, and one ear attuned to feedback from the Customer Development team.
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