The Lean Start-Up and MVP
Katherine Jane D. Unsay | BSHCEM 2H2
The Lean Startup is a scientific approach to building and managing startups that focuses on getting a desired product into the hands of customers as quickly as possible. The Lean Startup technique teaches you how to guide a startup, when to turn, and when to persevere, and how to create a firm as quickly as possible. It’s a methodical technique to developing new products. Too many businesses start with a product idea that they believe consumers would want. They then spend months, if not years, developing that product without ever displaying it to a potential buyer, even in its most basic form.
When companies fail to gain widespread client acceptance, it’s usually because they never spoke to potential customers to establish whether or not the product was appealing. Customers’ indifference finally communicates that they don’t care about the idea, and the startup collapses. If it succeeds, a manager can begin working on his or her campaign: recruiting early adopters, adding personnel to each subsequent trial or iteration, and eventually beginning to construct a product. That product will already have established clients by the time it is ready to be broadly marketed. It will have provided clear specifications for what needs to be built and will have solved genuine challenges. The growth process can be significantly shortened once entrepreneurs embrace verified learning. You don’t need to wait months for a product beta launch to shift the company’s direction if you focus on figuring out what to build — what customers want and will pay for. Instead, entrepreneurs can make incremental changes to their plans, inch by inch, minute by minute.
The build-measure-learn feedback loop is an important part of the Lean Startup process. The first phase is to identify the problem that needs to be solved, followed by the creation of a minimal viable product (MVP) to jumpstart the learning process as rapidly as feasible. Once the MVP is in place, a company may focus on fine-tuning the engine. This will necessitate measurement and learning, as well as actionable metrics that can demonstrate the cause and effect relationship. The firm will also employ the “Five Whys” technique of investigation, which entails asking simple questions to analyze and solve difficulties along the route. When this measurement and learning process is done effectively, it will be evident whether a corporation is pushing the business model’s drivers or not. If not, it’s time to pivot or make a structural course adjustment in order to test a new basic hypothesis about the product, strategy, and growth engine.
In conclusion, the manufacture of high-quality commodities is used to gauge industrial progress. Validated learning, a rigorous mechanism for demonstrating progress when one is entrenched in the soil of severe uncertainty, is the unit of progress for Lean Startups. The growth process can be significantly shortened once entrepreneurs embrace verified learning. You don’t need to wait months for a product beta launch to shift the company’s direction if you focus on figuring out what to build — what customers want and will pay for. Instead, entrepreneurs can make incremental changes to their plans, inch by inch, minute by minute.