Small Batches
A chapter summary from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.
Ries draws on lean manufacturing — the Toyota Production System — to argue that small batches outperform large batches in almost every dimension that matters to startups. A large batch (months of work shipped at once) hides defects, accumulates rework, and delays feedback. A small batch (a day of work shipped at once) surfaces problems early, when they are still cheap to fix, and produces feedback that informs the next batch.
The counterintuitive finding from lean manufacturing — confirmed in software, marketing, and customer development — is that small batches are faster end-to-end, even though they appear slower at the individual-task level. The time saved by not building defects, not accumulating rework, and not waiting for late feedback exceeds the apparent overhead of more frequent shipping.
For startups, the practical move is to compress every cycle — design, build, test, learn — into the smallest possible unit. A feature that would have taken a quarter becomes a two-week build that ships and gets measured. The next two-week cycle is informed by what shipped, not by what was planned in the quarter.
The discipline is uncomfortable because it requires shipping unfinished work, accepting initial-version judgment from customers, and trusting that the next iteration will improve what the first one revealed. Teams that learn the discipline outpace teams that ship perfectly polished products on a quarterly cadence — the polish ships less learning than the imperfection did.
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