The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth

by Eric Ries

What percentage of projects are canceled, and how long does it take to stop them? Before growth boards: Only 10 percent of the division’s projects were being killed. That meant 90 percent of the projects delivered something, regardless of whether or not someone wanted it. First round of growth boards: 20 percent of the projects were eliminated after a ninety-day cycle and for a lot less money. Second round of growth boards: 50 percent of the projects were stopped, many of them after only a sixty-day cycle. How are projects being killed? Before growth boards: They weren’t, for the most part, being canceled, for all the reasons we’ve discussed thus far. First round of growth boards: Projects were terminated by the growth board. Second round of growth boards: The responsibility shifted to the teams. “The teams would come in, and they would almost pitch the case like they wanted us to stop them.” Third round of growth boards (after the seed money had been handed down to product companies): The teams would come to the board and say, “We’ve already stopped the project.”