Why the Best Businesses Build MVPs
This model is the second part of a small series about creating and building a project or idea. You can view the other parts of this series here:
What is the Corridor Method?
If this is your first visit, and you’re incapable of clicking the link above, the Corridor Method is the method of progression through taking action, rather than over planning and formulating the perfect outcome before inevitably never starting.
With the Corridor Method, you can only see the true opportunities of a project, or idea, once you get started. These are opportunities that you wouldn’t think to plan for, but only see once you start, they present themselves as you’re exposed to new information, through ongoing testing and iteration.
Learn how to walk before you start to run
Knowing to get started is one thing, but knowing how to get started is a completely a separate issue. Once you understand the concept of progression, and the importance of action, we can look to the next model required in building a project or idea - the importance of knowing how to build your idea before getting stuck in and going deep down the rabbit hole. This is an agile MVP process used by lean startups, it is definitely not a process used by slow bureaucratic corporates.
No ones really watching
There is a general consensus from many people in business that you can’t bring something to market until you’ve built the perfect solution. These ‘business people’ tend to hold a position that you must spend the time building the perfect product, as people will then flock to it, and praise you for all the work you’ve done.
The reality for 99% of the worlds businesses, is that hardly anyone knows about their product, and for 99.9% of the worlds businesses, hardly anyone cares about their product either.
This is hard for many fragile business egos to come to terms with, but more often than not, whatever you make, no one really cares. The whole world is almost certainly not watching.
Rome wasn’t created in an overtime shift (or built in a day)
Compounding the fact that no ones watching your business, is the fact that building perfect solutions takes a very long time. There’s always tweaks you can make, there’s always opinions you could run it by, there’s always something you could change, which means for what could take one unit of time to build, can ends up taking ten units or more.
It’s an overused cliche, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, it took years of small improvements, adjustments and changes before it became the vast sprawling Empire across Southern Europe
You can spend months building, testing, consulting and tweaking something that may have always been destined for failure. There’s a chance it’ll succeed, but there’s an even larger chance it won’t.
Put your ego aside, let the market decide what works
Eric Ries, a Silicone Valley veteran, is mostly credited for popularising this thought in his best selling book, The Lean Startup. The Lean Startup builds on the idea of moving and learning quickly in organisations, by constantly checking your ego (and assumptions), and putting them to test to learn and improve product, rather than building an empire and hoping for the best.
He calls these small builds (or tests) Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), in the words of my favourite mate Wikipedia:
“A minimum viable product (MVP) is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development.” - The Most Trusted Source - Wikipedia
How to build agile MVPs
To make an MVP, you must start with an idea, or assumption, to then build a MVP that either proves or disproves the idea through measurement of results over a set period
Using this article as an example, I can turn an assumption into a test: If I make content on MVPs, it will be very popular, because prospective business owners are always researching how to build a business before they start. The MVP for this test would be to create an article about MVPs to gauge interest, not a whole website, not a dedicated Youtube Channel, just a small article on MVPs.
A good test can completely open up a new angle for a product or idea, aligning very closely with the hidden gems that can be uncovered in the Corridor Method. For my test above, I may find that this article booms in popularity, so I could write more articles about Eric Ries and Lean Startup methodology.
If the above test ‘fails’, it will be the cost of the time writing the article, allowing me to move on very quickly, without investing a ridiculous amount of time upfront. I may also find that no one likes the article, but they may love my Wikipedia definitions, so I’ll make a website dedicated to Wikipedia definitions.
The process for generating MVP tests is known as the Build Measure Learn Loop, the loop brings the majority of the book together into one visual:
Build enough agile MVPs and you’ll start landing on winners
So much of life is a series of random events. The beauty of this, is you can use life’s randomness to your advantage, by testing as many MVPs as possible.
The Build Measure Learn Loop can be applied to anything, product pricing, product development and ideas, promotional ideas, distribution processes, staff organisation, literally anything. It’s a mental philosophy that should be used across any element of a project, idea or business.
The more loops you make, the more you learn, the faster you complete the loops, the faster you learn. The more you learn, the better your product becomes, the more value it provides the market, and ultimately, the more money your business makes.
Test everything you can in small builds, scale up what works to full builds, ditch what doesn’t work. Don’t waste your time when you really don’t have to.
Key takeouts from using agile MVPs:
Check your ego: Hardly anyone knows about your business, and you can almost certainly be sure no one cars.
Check your assumptions: Test everything you assume, or any ideas you have, the market will decide whats going to work and what won’t.
Test small builds (MVPs), and scale them when they work: Small builds don’t take time to build, but if they work, then you can put in the effort and resource to scale it up.