Agile is dead. Double Bets is here.

Double Bets is a project management framework made for indie software maker and bootstrapper.

Agile project management focus on a ‘vision first, product-second’ mindset to keep your product evolving and iterating throughout sprints. It’s a great method and have been the mainstream for years, but it just don’t work for indie makers.

Introducing Double Bets.

Double Bets makes it easier for solo makers or people with a full time job to build a profitable and sustainable products without big starting capital, and runs on an extremely lean and “Distribution-first, product-second, vision-third” mindset.

The framework gives you discipline to stay lean, ship and iterate fast, while minimising distractions in early stage to help you iterate to Product-Market fit faster.

In Double Bets, only 4 things matter: ship new version, get users, user feedback, money. All other things like bug fix, documentation, product analytics or branding are all distraction and should be minimised or ignored.

How does Double Bets works:

Step 1: Setup

• You start with 2 product ideas in the same time.
• You start by answering the following questions for the product ideas:

1. Describe the product in 1 line.
2. Who are the users?
3. What is the problem you are solving for them?
4. How do you make money?
5. How will you get your first 100 users?
6. What is the first version you can ship in 2 weeks?

• After answering the essential questions, you can start a double bet sprint, which is 2-week long.
• In each sprint, there will be two objective: ship a new version of your products and reach a revenue target.
• You will start the sprint by a sprint planning session, where you define the new version specification that could be shipped within 2 weeks time and a revenue target.
• Then you need to set a revenue target, and draft a plan on how to reach that (e.g. what marketing channels to use)
• After finishing the above initial set up, you can start the sprint.

Step 2: During sprint

• Everyday, you will have a daily standup to manage to-dos.
• And other time, you will be working on your to-do list to complete the current tasks (should be anything within the 4 core category: ship new version, get users etc)
• During the sprint, there are also some thing you should cater:

1. You should set up a ‘User feedback database’ to store all user feedbacks.
2. You should set up a ‘Revenue and cost sheet’ to track all sales revenue and money spent in the project.
3. You should set up a ‘Iteration ideas’ to list all potential ideas for next version.
4. You should set up a ‘Channel tracker’ to list all marketing channels you are using to get users and their performances.

Step 3: End of sprint

• On the last day of sprint, you will have a sprint retro, where you review whether you have reached your sprint objectives and is there anything you can improve in terms of productivity, workflow and production quality for the next sprint.
• You can decide whether you want to continue working on the ideas or switching to new ideas in the next sprint.