Lean Business Planning

Go lean with your busienss planning

Finally here is a book that will become your affiliate while planning your new startup or project.

As an co-founder of two startups I was recommended to read the Lean Business Planning book. This book simplifies the planning process and give you exactly what you need to start building your dynamic lean business plan.Writing a business plan has always been a challenge that sometimes take weeks or even months to finish. The authors of this book and many others claim that business plans doesn`t work for many reasons.

The Authors point out early why it is critical to create rolling business plans for a short period of time, 3-6-12 months. You should be in a position where you can shift strategy, objectives and activities related to internal and external upcoming circumstances.

I believe that the author`s Idea about this book is to create a starting point for dynamic and short term business planning for anyone, regardless of educational background or experience. The book take you through all steps and bring in elements from The Lean Startup Movement - Steve Blank`s Customer Process, Eric Ries Lean Startup and more.
The authors approach is to make business planning simple and they splitt up and identify the
STRATEGY as Business Idea + your Business Model” and PROJECT as your Objectives and Tasks

In the first section of the book you identify your busieness Idea and already at this point you need to identify and focus on your uniqueness, what kind of problem you solve and for whom. Which customers has this problem. The authors point out that it`s important to look from the perspective of your customers when you identify elements in your business idea.

One element that will impact your business idea and your business model is to cover your recourses and what plans, personal goals or restrictions the owners may have for the company or project.

In section two the athors focus on how you plan and define your objectives, analyse risks and and set up a taskplan where you also include your team. After defining your business the process include ”Gaps” where your analyse gaps regarding Strengths and Weaknesses in your business Idea/Model compare to your competitors. This survey will be important when you start defining your objectives and tasks.

In the end of the book the Overview chapter focus on status and forecast including 5 measured instruments: Your objectives, risk, task, profit and loss and your cashflow.

You will use these instruments to monitor your whole plan and process and identify gaps and make changes and adjustments into your plan such the business model, objectives, tasks, costs etc. In each section the book recommend that you test your elements of your idea and business model, your minimum viable product (MVP) and include a selection of future customer as early as possible.

This the heart of Customer development (lean) and you will search for answers on how customers feel about your product, your price modell, their feedback on what they are missing. Further your price and find out how to sell to your target groups.

The whole point is to do this the lean way (Eric Ries) and include the customer development process (Steve Blank). The old static business plan is not working anymore. You need a business plan and you need to make it for a short period of time 3-6 months, make it dynamic and include your co-workers in the process.

Lean Business Planning is a great source with updated know-how regarding lean business planning and represent an excellent platform for everyday planning. This book will help you grow your business and show you how to get knowledge about and include your customers in this process and thereby help you succeed.

I highly recommend to use this book as a guidance together with the cloud based tool leanbusinessplanner.com.