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LLMs and Generative AI in the enterprise.
An on-demand learning experience from the people who brought you The Phoenix Project, Team Topologies, Accelerate, and more.
Learn how making work visible, value stream management, and flow metrics can affect change in your organization.
Clarify team interactions for fast flow using simple sense-making approaches and tools.
Multiple award-winning CTO, researcher, and bestselling author Gene Kim hosts enterprise technology and business leaders.
In the first part of this two-part episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim speaks with Dr. Ron Westrum, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Eastern Michigan University.
In the first episode of Season 2 of The Idealcast, Gene Kim speaks with Admiral John Richardson, who served as Chief of Naval Operations for four years.
New half-day virtual events with live watch parties worldwide!
DevOps best practices, case studies, organizational change, ways of working, and the latest thinking affecting business and technology leadership.
Is slowify a real word?
Could right fit help talent discover more meaning and satisfaction at work and help companies find lost productivity?
The values and philosophies that frame the processes, procedures, and practices of DevOps.
This post presents the four key metrics to measure software delivery performance.
September 26, 2024
In recent years, the concept of minimum viable product (MVP) has gained widespread adoption in the tech industry. However, as with many popular ideas, its original intent can often be lost in translation. Today, we’ll explore how the MVP concept has been misunderstood and misapplied and why returning to its roots is crucial.
The MVP concept, introduced by Frank Robinson in 2001 and later popularized by Eric Ries in his book Lean Startup, was designed as a tool for innovation and learning. Its primary purpose was to help teams gather valuable customer feedback with minimal effort and resources.
Unfortunately, many teams and organizations have strayed from this original purpose. As Fishman and McLarty point out in their book Unbundling the Enterprise, “While most everyone understands ‘minimum,’ not all teams are aligned on the meaning of ‘viable’ or ‘product’ in this context.”
This misalignment has led to a common misconception: that an MVP is simply the product with the fewest features necessary for a public launch. This interpretation misses the mark.
Fishman and McLarty remind us that an MVP is actually “the version of a new product that allows teams to gather the maximum amount of validated customer feedback with minimal effort.” It’s not about creating a stripped-down product but rather about learning and validating hypotheses.
The authors emphasize that an MVP is “not about creating the product with the least number of features necessary for a public launch, but rather a tool for testing hypotheses and discovering what will meet customers’ needs.”
To truly benefit from the MVP approach, teams must shift their focus from feature minimization to learning maximization. This means:
By returning to the true purpose of MVP—rapid learning and validation—teams can innovate more effectively and efficiently. It’s time to move beyond the misconception of MVP as a minimal feature set and embrace it as a powerful tool for customer-centric innovation.
Remember, the goal isn’t to launch the smallest possible product but to learn the most about your customers with the least amount of effort. That’s the true spirit of the minimum viable product.
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