The underlying assumption in Scrum/Agile is that there is a product owner that will outline the user stories/requirements. So how does the product owner come up with these requirements? This is an especially important question when you are starting a company.

Traditional business planning would require a business plan be written outlining what problem is going to be solved and how much money will be made by solving it. With the business plan in hand, you raise some VC money and off you go. I like to think of this process as the waterfall approach to starting a company. Revenue projections are made up with very little data. Just like development estimates are done in waterfall.

Boostrapping offers a Scrum like approach for business planning. Much like Scrum, Boostrapping embraces th unknown and accounts for it in the process. There is also a heavy emphasis on getting a customer before you do anything. The whole idea of Demo, Sell, Build feels very similar to the release planning of Scrum. Whereby you acknowledge you do not have all the answers and are committed to accepting new information during the process.

Boostrapping and Scrum resonate very strongly with me simply because the embrace and account for change. It seems so simple doesn’t it? I think Voltaire had it right: “Common sense is not so common.”