An excellent software development company with the goal to deliver your high-quality product to the market as soon as possible while still ensuring that it is valuable for your customers: Pragmatic Coders

Together with time-tested methods, Pragmatic Coders apply innovative approach to work, to create external innovation centres for clients. Pragmatic Coders are Partners in your business! The company specializes in FinTech, Blockchain, and Cloud Software Development. Pragmatic Coders’ goal is to ensure the quick growth of your products by applying best knowledge and experience! The company is passionate about Agile and Lean Software Development where its unique pragmatic and empirical approach works the best. When coming up with your business idea it is important to turn it into a business plan. But getting your thoughts out of your head and into something tangible can be challenging. Developing a traditional business plan can take weeks or months, and although it might be helpful for pitching your business idea, it won't help in capturing and testing out your ideas. For this purpose, it is more beneficial to utilize Lean Canvas, a startup-friendly alternative to the business model canvas.

At Pragmatic Coders, the team offers Startup Consulting services that include helping you validate your ideas so you can move forward with confidence. Together with clients, Pragmatic Coders use Lean Canvas for mitigating risks and assembling the product vision.

Q. Why is Lean Canvas beneficial for startups?

As mentioned previously Lean canvas is a business model canvas but more entrepreneur-focused and designed for startups at the beginning stage. Some of the main benefits of it are:

• The lean product canvas forces startups to distill their product vision into a simple, concise document.
• It helps founders focus on the most important aspects of their product and avoid getting bogged down in unnecessary details.
• The lean product canvas can be used as a tool to help validate or invalidate a startup's business model.
• It is a valuable resource for communicating with potential investors and customers.
• It's easy and quick to put together and allows everyone to be on the same page.

Taking all of this into account, using Lean Canvas instead of a traditional business plan is the best route for startup founders who want to challenge their ideas before launching an MVP. Additionally, it is easy to change and update as your ideas progress.

Q. How do you use Lean Canvas?

Lean Canvas is made up of 9 blocks that guide you through the necessary areas that need to be considered, starting from the customers all the way to the cost structure. As you move forward you fill in the blocks with information that will help you gain clarity and shape your business idea. To fill in your Lean Canvas you can use a printed pdf lean canvas template, use a whiteboard and sticky notes or use other tools such as Miro.

The Lean Canvas template takes around 20 minutes to complete and should be done in one sitting with your team. You can always come back to it to update your business model or if you need to brainstorm ideas for a new feature in the future. There are no strict rules regarding the order that the blocks should be filled in.

Problem - start with the problem definition

In this part of the Lean Canvas, we focus on the problem that we are going to solve. Without a problem, there is no product or service to offer. Put yourself in the customer's shoes and understand the pain points and challenges they are dealing with. Make a list of one to three problems that you want to provide a solution for. Try not to clutter this space with too many ideas, it's good to start small and as you make progress in your startup journey you can make room for new issues to address.

Customer Segments - define your customers

It's extremely important to get to know the group of users you are targeting. We can use the Lean Canvas model to explore and define potential clients that are struggling with the problem defined in the previous step.

Try to be as specific as possible in defining your target customer as this will help you later with marketing. A common mistake that you should avoid is defining your audience too broadly. Remember that you can't fulfill the needs of everyone. However, if you think that your product could be solving different problems for several customer segments it's beneficial to create a separate Lean Canvas for every customer segment. It is also possible that it will be solving the same problems differently for different user groups.

Getting to know your target market is beneficial not only in the beginning stages of your product but it's something you will have to consider as you move forward with it. A good understanding of your audience will help you improve your product and build strong customer relationships.

Lean Canvas - the bottom line

A key factor in the Lean Methodology is the elimination of waste. The downside of traditional business plans is that they require a long and complicated process and won't help you in the ideation stage. And a conventional business model canvas might not be ideal for companies that are just starting out. As a lean startup, you need a faster way of getting your ideas down by using a lean business model canvas.

Using Lean Canvas you can envision your next steps, cover all of the essential points of your business idea, and test each section through trial and error. Lean Canvas aims to help you create a more complete picture of your business idea and get you started with your MVP. If you have any doubts regarding business models or Lean Canvas you can count on the help of our experts.

Marcin, Co-CEO / Co-founder

“We don’t write code just to prove that our developers are the best craftsmen in the world. We write it to make your product useful, efficient and secure.”