Review: "Lean Analytics" by Alistair Croll, Benjamin Yoskovitz; O'Reilly Media

Alistair Croll & Benjamin Yoskovitz have written Lean Analytics for the entrepreneur who’s using the “Lean Startup” ideas of business model development.

Lean Startup is big on data-driven decisions; “don’t guess - measure”. And then change your plan based on what you learnt. This book focuses on that measurement, how to choose the metric, how to measure it, how to use the results. The authors use many case studies to illustrate their experiences, which I found very useful.

Their “Big Idea” is that you should only have “One Metric That Matters” at any time; whilst you may be collecting and monitoring other KPIs, only 1 should be the focus of the business at any time.

I found the book interesting, and well-written; it gave me some valuable insights about to use metrics in my own startup and I look forward to the next edition in the Early Access program to fill in some of the missing chapters.

I’d recommend this book to any entrepreneur.

I did wonder, however, whether some of the middle chapters had somewhat lost focus from the original idea for the book, and had slipped into more general “Lean Startup” ground. I had the impression that the authors had more they wanted to say about the general way to build a business; perhaps material for a separate book?

Disclaimer: I received this book as part of the O’Reilly Bloggers Review program. This review is based on the Sep 2012 Early Access edition.