Interview with David Bland

Episode 38 of the Modern Agile Show features an interview with David Bland, a veteran lean and agile coach and co-author of the book, Testing Business Ideas. The book features a catalog of 44 experiments that help people learn faster whether their ideas are desirable, viable and feasible. David shares stories about how a small San Francisco startup and a large insurance company both used experiments described in the book to de-risk their ideas and quickly learn from the market. David and Josh discuss how intuition, vision and ethics relate to testing business ideas, how important it is to create an environment in which it is safe to experiment and learn rapidly and how ideas from David’s book relates to Modern Agile’s four principles. David explains the challenges that relate to adopting the ideas from his book and he talks about the importance of having a healthy skepticism about what to build, talking to users and aligning work with company vision. Finally, David talks about Assumption Mapping, and how it helps fill in the gap between canvases, like the Business Model Canvas, and the experiments you conduct.