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References: Lean Testing Fundamentals

  1. Lean startup - Wikipedia - Overview of the lean startup methodology, including the build-measure-learn loop, minimum viable products, and validated learning. Provides the broader framework behind this chapter's lean validation practice.

  2. Minimum viable product - Wikipedia - Explains the MVP concept coined by Frank Robinson and popularized by Steve Blank and Eric Ries, including testing approaches and criticisms. Grounds the chapter's narrower "minimum testable iteration" idea.

  3. Customer development - Wikipedia - Describes Steve Blank's four-step methodology for testing business model hypotheses with real customers before building. Underpins the chapter's emphasis on real-world evidence over assumptions.

  4. Testing Business Ideas (2019) - David J. Bland & Alexander Osterwalder - Wiley - Bland and Osterwalder catalog 44 named experiment types, including the concierge test and the pre-order test, giving precise, reusable names to exactly the manual-service and pre-sale formats this chapter teaches.

  5. Running Lean (3rd Edition) - Ash Maurya - O'Reilly Media - Maurya pioneered the "ask for the sale" and traction-testing sequence within the Lean Canvas methodology, showing founders how to prove demand manually before writing a line of code, mirroring the chapter's manual-before-automated rule.

  6. Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything - Harvard Business Review - Steve Blank's HBR article explaining why lean, hypothesis-driven experimentation replaces the traditional business plan for reducing the risk of building something no one will pay for.

  7. The Experiment Library - Strategyzer - A library of dozens of business experiments organized by cost, time, and strength of evidence, giving founders a menu of test formats beyond the three covered directly in this chapter.

  8. An MVP Is Not a Cheaper Product, It's About Smart Learning - Steve Blank - Argues that a minimum viable product exists to test customer demand cheaply, not to save engineering effort, reinforcing why a minimum testable iteration is scoped around a single question.

  9. The Startup Roadmap - SCORE - A free, structured course walking founders through validating a business idea before committing money, paralleling this chapter's sequence from test design to kill decision.

  10. Do Things That Don't Scale - Y Combinator Startup Library - Paul Graham's essay urging founders to do manual, unscalable work early to learn faster, directly illustrating the chapter's manual-before-automated principle.