James Edge - Lean Analytics: The Ultimate Guide to an Agile Way of Analytics, Advanced Analytics, and Data Science for a Superior Way to Build Startups and Run Enterprises

Lean Analytics

The Ultimate Guide to an Agile Way of Analytics, Advanced Analytics, and Data Science for a Superior Way to Build Startups and Run Enterprises

Copyright 2018 by James Edge

All rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author. Reviewers may quote brief passages in reviews.

Disclaimer: No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, or transmitted by email without permission in writing from the publisher.

While all attempts have been made to verify the information provided in this publication, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions or contrary interpretations of the subject matter herein.

This book is for entertainment purposes only. The views expressed are those of the author alone, and should not be taken as expert instruction or commands. The reader is responsible for his or her own actions.

Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, including international, federal, state and local laws governing professional licensing, business practices, advertising and all other aspects of doing business in the US, Canada, UK or any other jurisdiction is the sole responsibility of the purchaser or reader.

Neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility or liability whatsoever on behalf of the purchaser or reader of these materials. Any perceived slight of any individual or organization is purely unintentional.

Introduction

T he following chapters discuss how to incorporate Lean Analytics into your startup company, and from there, how to use Lean Analytics to streamline your company and make it the best that it can be. In the process, Lean philosophy is also examined and all of the things that apply to it.

Conventional business philosophy falls short in many ways. This is partially because the conventional business strategy is from a time where available data wasnt nearly as great as it is now. Lean Analytics is a natural evolution in the approach to business it represents a more streamlined business model in the information age.

This book provides everything you need to learn about this model and how you can use it to your advantage.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Lean Analytics

L ean Analytics is the engine which powers the concept of using Lean principles to guide your startup. It is an essential hallmark of the concept of build-measure-learn , which is discussed in the next section.

To understand Lean Analytics, you also need to understand Lean itself.

Lean has its origin in the 1980s, with a concept known as Lean manufacturing . Lean manufacturing was a concept developed to help American production companies compete with Japanese production companies.

Essentially, Japanese production companies had their own methodology for trimming down the business cycle and production process and making things run far smoother than normal. American companies lagged behind and produced waste in comparison waste being a relative term applying, of course, to more than just the trash that the company generates. Waste in the Lean conceptualization is the expense of anything that doesnt need to be expended, and in this capacity, you can start to form a wider idea of what waste can mean.

Money isnt your only expenditure though it is, of course, one form. The process of starting a business and running a production process involves different resources, all of which can be wasted. Time, for example, is a resource as dead time means dead labor, which means that you are spending money on labor that isnt utilized. Moreover, time is also a resource because the market is constantly shifting and time wasted means that you arent actively meeting a demand in the market at that given moment.

There are numerous resources which the Lean process aims to avoid wasting time, the actual labor, the money spent on labor, the additional raw resources used in the process and ultimately wasted, and so forth. Perhaps the biggest waste is things produced in excess that isnt bought or things which oversaturate the market and dont fit a certain demand, as well as things which are processed beyond what the market requires. This doesnt include products which are defective because of an ineffective manufacturing process or something of a similar nature.

Lean, therefore, aims to ameliorate these problems and eliminate the waste from production processes through a standardized methodology of analyzing the waste and then making gradual, continual improvements to the company.

Down the line, sometime in the 2000s, came a concept called Lean Startup , which recognizes that there are many commonalities between the manufacturing process and the process of starting a company, with the first and greatest commonalities being that both require a constant resource pool and have the capacity to produce quite a bit of waste.

The Lean Startup model is benefited and carried along by the concept of Lean Analytics, which bolsters the concept and makes it run far smoother. Lean Startup recognized that in the process of starting a business, there is quite a bit of capital poured into it that can be wasted and general risk undertaken. The Lean Startup process intends to improve both of these issues by coming up with ways to reduce the overall amount of resources and time invested as well as the overall amount of risk accrued by the investor.

You may be wondering how this is the case. For that, the Lean Startup concept offers a vivid framework for developing a worthwhile startup, from the conception process to the actual development of your company. Even though this book isnt about Lean Startup per se, it is about one of the most powerful engines for Lean Startup. Thus, now you will learn about those concepts so that you know what youre getting into with all of it.

Lean Startup

The Lean Analytics method is tailored toward startups to help them mature and quickly become just what the world needs at the moment. The reality is that most startups dont start out with an explicit goal in mind, and their exact purpose will often change and mutate quite a bit over the course of the companys development. Indeed, a lot of the time, your first formulation of a company ends up being nothing like what the company turns out to be, even if its successful. But there are also times when it does there are instances when a company will turn out to be correct in its initial assessment. However, this doesnt discount the fact that many different companies do end up pivoting and shifting their resources elsewhere.