Hypothesis-Driven Pull Guides Product Development

In lean manufacturing, the "pull" system is used to ensure that production is aligned with customer demand. Each step in the production process pulls the parts it needs from the previous step. This helps to reduce waste and ensure that the right products are being produced at the right time.

In a startup, the "pull" system works a little differently. It is not the customer who pulls work from the product development team. It is the startup's hypotheses about the customer that pull work from the product development team.

The goal of a startup is to learn how to build a sustainable business. This is done by running experiments to test the startup's hypotheses. Each experiment is a pull request that asks the product development team to build a Minimum Viable Product to test a specific hypothesis.

This hypothesis-driven approach to product development has several advantages:

• It ensures that the team is focused on the right things: The team is always working on the most important experiments.
• It reduces waste: The team is not building features that are not needed to test a hypothesis.
• It accelerates learning: The team is constantly learning from its experiments.

By using a hypothesis-driven pull system, a startup can ensure that its product development efforts are aligned with its goal of building a sustainable business.