Consider Minimum Viable Products and Experiments

Each of the preceding roadmaps has something called “MVP for release.” MVP means minimum viable product. Some feature sets are quite small. The team can deliver the entire feature set of multiple stories in one small chunk of time, such as an iteration or within a short cadence.

I see many feature sets that require more than one planning cadence or iteration to complete. And in the case of these roadmaps, you can see that the product owner wants the team to make progress across multiple feature sets in one planning iteration.

How can you show progress? With an MVP or maybe an MVE. A minimum viable product has enough functionality for the customer to use, even if it’s not the full functionality. A minimum viable experiment provides feedback for the team and the product owner.

In The Lean Startup [Rie11], Eric Ries suggests the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop, shown in the following figure. The concept is that you build the smallest possible piece of your idea in the form of a product. When you release that product (the MVP), you can measure its success by gathering data. You can then learn, which helps you create the next batch of ideas.

When product owners create MVPs to test out the minimum features, they can use the Build-Measure-Learn loop.

Sometimes we want to see something even smaller than a useful feature or feature set. That’s an MVE. With an MVE, the product owner might think it’s worth considering a feature set. But the product owner wants more data. That’s why you create an MVE, something even smaller.

If you develop digital products, you might find that you don’t need nearly this amount of work for an MVE or even an MVP.

Sometimes you have a complex product and you can’t find a customer willing to experiment with you. The potential customers might think it’s too much work, or too complex to work on an MVE. Consider these possibilities:

• Identify the smallest MVE you can. What can you do to release that MVE as something a potential customer will try?

• Consider a simulation you can show potential customers. Maybe they can provide feedback on the simulation, not a product.

• Revisit your strategy to see if it demands this project now. (See Manage Your Project Portfolio [Rot16a] for more details.)

The less work you do before you release, the more valuable the work the team completes is. That’s because the team can receive feedback on what it’s done so far.