Developing a Minimum Viable Product

From Wikpedia: In product development, the Minimum Viable Product or MVP is a strategy used for fast and quantitative market testing of a product or product feature, popularized by Eric Ries for web applications.

A Minimum Viable Product has just those features (and no more) that allows the product to be deployed. The product is typically deployed to a subset of possible customers, such as early adopters that are thought to be more forgiving, more likely to give feedback, and able to grasp a product vision from an early prototype or marketing information. It is a strategy targeted at avoiding building products that customers do not want, that seeks to maximize the information learned about the customer per dollar spent. "The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort."

A MVP is not a minimal product, it is a strategy and process directed toward making and selling a product to customers. It is an iterative process of idea generation, prototyping, presentation, data collection, analysis and learning. One seeks to minimize the total time spent on an iteration. The process is iterated until a desirable product-market fit is obtained, or until the product is deemed to be non-viable.

A Minimum Viable Product may be an entire product or a sub-set of product (such as a feature).

• Product: (smoke test) The canonical MVP strategy for a web application is to create a mock website for the product and purchase online advertising to direct traffic to the site. The mock website may consist of a marketing landing page with a link for more information or purchase. The link is not connected to a purchasing system, instead clicks are recorded and measure customer interest.
• Feature: (deploy first, code later) A link to a new feature in a web application may be provided in a prominent location on an existing website. The feature is not implemented, rather an apology, mock-up, or marketing page is provided. Clicks of the link are recorded and provide an indication as to the demand for the feature in the customer base.

Aardvark shares its methods behind creating a minimum viable product and proving it.

 

Watch live video from Startup Lessons Learned on Justin.tv

What prompted me to re-visit the MVP was the book, Rework authored by the 37signals team. 37 Signals creates simple small business software and their products include Ruby on the Rails and Backpack. Their motto is goodbye to bloat and provide simple, focused software that does just what you need and nothing you don't. Rework is…

“Inspirational. REWORK is a minimalist manifesto that's profoundly practical. In a world where we all keep getting asked to do more with less, the authors show us how to do less and create more.”

-Scott Rosenberg, co-Founder of Salon.com and author of DREAMING IN CODE

If you need to buy a book for an "entrepreneur," in the book they call them “starters") this is a good book to ground them in the real world. If you are a follower of the Lean Start-up craze this is also a book that coincides with many of the same thoughts. 

The MVP is a key term that I think should be considered more in the marketing world than what it is. When I think about some of the best advertisements, they are all geared around one simple thought and message. Look at any Steve Jobs presentations, “The Worlds thinnest Notebook” for example. Who can forget the notebook being slid into a manila folder? Getting rid of the hype and keeping it simple should be part of our marketing mantra.

The other part of the book that really hit home to me was their ability to create products out of what they do. I am always amazed in the consulting world on how few of people practice what they preach, (Myself included at times). How many consultants that preach planning, really plan themselves? How many Six Sigma Consultants, use their own tools? I think it is important to walk your own walk and not just for your customers’ sake. Who better than you to create new products and applications out of what you do, such as 37 Signals has done. Enjoy Rework! I listened to the audio and missed out on many of the cool graphics till I viewed the book’s website.

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Going Lean in Healthcare: On the Mend

This past weekend I finished up reading On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the Industry. I started the book one morning over a cup of coffee and it was either a large cup of coffee or a very engaging book. I noticed a craving for a 2^nd cup after 75 pages. I also noticed that it was actually a work day and I needed to start my day, the perils of having an office at home. The book reads similar to other business novels such as The Goal or The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Turnaround except for the fact it is true. This is Thedacare’s story and the authors discuss successes and failures in the same voice. It was quite interesting and this might be a stretch but at times it felt like the drama was unfolding. The book truly represents an organization’s Lean Journey and I would recommend if for any organization for an overview of what that journey may entail.

I was disappointed at first that it was as short as it was 150 pages. However, I found myself this past week starting to go back and have to admit that referencing and rereading parts of it was much easier. The subtle attention to detail and the preciseness of the statements made for a true Lean Learning experience. For example, I had gained additional insights on finding Change Agents within an organization. Actually in review, Change Agents were only mentioned on 3 pages. On broader perspective the book was about change and the authors illustrated the 5 Stages of Change with a similar diagram:

The difficult steps that you can imagine in taking a Healthcare facility of this size and character through a Lean Journey were well documented. It started at Why they began and ended with choosing a successor to continue the journey. They also gave an outline on how Lean can be applied in healthcare from a broader perspective.

A description of the book from the publisher: Lean Enterprise Institute:

• In On the Mend, John Toussaint, MD, former CEO of ThedaCare, and Roger A. Gerard, PhD, its chief learning officer, candidly describe the triumphs and stumbles of a seven-year journey to lean healthcare, an effort that continues today and that has slashed medical errors, improved patient outcomes, raised staff morale, and saved $27 million dollars in costs without layoffs. Find out:
• How lean techniques of value-stream-mapping and rapid improvement events cut the average “door-to-balloon” time for heart attack patients at two hospitals from 90 minutes to 37.
• What ThedaCare leaders did to replace medicine’s “shame and blame” culture with a lean culture based on continuous improvement and respect for people.How the lean principle of “building in quality at the source” broke down divisions among medical specialties allowing teams to develop patient care plans faster.
• Why traditional modern management is the single biggest impediment to lean healthcare.
• How the plan-do-study-act cycle coupled with rapid improvement events cut the wait time at a robotic radiosurgery unit from 26 days to six.
• How the lean concept of “one piece flow” saved time in treating ischemic stroke patients, increasing the number of patients receiving a CT scan within 25 minutes from 51% to 89%.
• How senior leaders at other healthcare organizations can begin their own lean transformations using a nine-step action plan based on what ThedaCare did — and what it would do differently.

P.S. Actually, it was just fun reading and I even noticed the type of paper the book was printed on.

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TOC Thinking Process Podcast

Theory of Constraints Handbook authors John G. Schleier, Jr. and James F. Cox III were part of my recent podcast Holistic approach to the Theory of Constraints. We covered so much material during the interview that I split the discussion to 2 parts. The one preceding and another on the Thinking Processes of TOC. I enjoyed the conversation, I hope you do.

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An excerpt from the podcast::

Joe:  When we talk about  lean problem solving, we talk about the five why's, but the thinking process that the Theory of Constraints uses is a whole different level of thinking, is it not? I mean it goes much, much further than you can with lets say the five Why concept.

Jim:  Yes, I agree with you, but if you took the five why concept, the early use of the thinking tools and the current reality tree in particular, both would ask why but in TOC you would validate that that cause really existed before you asked the second "why". Then when you ask the second Why, you would validate that that cause existed. So I look at the five "why's" and what we call the Snowflake Effect, or Diving Down to identify a core problem as being very similar, except TOC is like a person that wears a belt and suspenders. TOC wants to ensure that that cause really exists and validate that cause exists before they ask the second or the third or the fourth Why.

John:  We go through categories of what we call legitimate reservation, which are also documented in the book, in reviewing the logic so that we can assure that it's solid.

So the picture we see of the current reality expressed in logical cause and effect construct is really right on the money. It accounts for causes of all of the undesirable effects that we've been able to identify in the environment.

Related Blogs:
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Can you be talented enough on your own?

Can you be talented enough on your own? One of the tremendous powers of continuous improvement and whether you want to call it Lean, Six Sigma, Agile or even Scrum is the power of the team and collaboration. Cross-functional teams create high-bandwidth communication. It is not about individual talent, though it can help, it is more about effective collaboration.

See what John Hagel, co-author of The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion says about Talent.

Individual Talent certainly helps but when the Yankees lost all the role players in the early 2000’s it took a long time for them to re-build a team…starting with star power doesn’t hurt, but does it get you there?

Starting with the TOC Thinking Process

Theory of Constraints Handbook authors John G. Schleier, Jr. and James F. Cox III were part of my recent podcast Holistic approach to the Theory of Constraints. We covered so much material during the interview that I split the discussion to 2 parts. The one preceding and another on the Thinking Processes of TOC. This was featured that in a podcast release on Tuesday, June 22nd. An excerpt from the upcoming podcast: 

Joe:  That seems like the passion that you have for Theory of Constraints is really personal development. Is it not?

Jim:  I think so. I think Goldratt's major contribution to all this is, the thinking tools. And it's just the practical application from logical to common sense. But it's so uncommon with most people today. They take actions, and they don't understand the full ramifications of these actions. And then they have to live through the consequences of these actions. And I think his tools offer tremendous opportunity to change people's lives where they can achieve their goals.

John:  If we go back to the chapter we were taking about earlier of Kathy Suerken on TOC and education, one thing kind of connected to this that impressed me, was that her observation was that the thinking tools can really be learned. At least some of them can be learned by grade school children. And in her chapter there's a picture of a conflict cloud.

That's drawn in chalk, I think it's in chalk, on the side walk in grade school in the UK. And these grade school kids come out and resolve conflicts that they have, by walking through that sidewalk diagram of a conflict cloud, because they have been taught how to do it. And it's just kind of interesting. I think that these tools can be understood and used by very, very young people.

The conversation I had with them prompted me to re-visit the thinking process and even blog about it last week, Problem Solving – Think 3, Not 5. I have always liked the concept of the thinking process but admittedly struggle using it. As stated by John above, if grade schools kids get it why can’t I? So starting small or simpler was my goal. So why not start at grade school level, I read the paper everyday? My recent reading took me to Thinking Smart: Applying the Theory of Constraints in Development Thinking Skills. I found the book delightfully simple and relevant. In fact, it has spurred me on to take the learning skills developed to the next level. There still may be a Jonah left in me.

Tomorrow’s podcast not only discusses the Thinking skills but the applications such as: Schools, Juvenile Centers, Prisons, Healthcare, Athletics and College Courses.

Value stream Mapping Workshop

I had the pleasure of attending the Lean Enterprise Workshop workshop: Value-Stream Mapping for the Office and Service.  The workshop description:

This interactive workshop demonstrates how to apply value-stream mapping, a fundamental and critical tool, to address what many companies find difficult to do: making a fundamental change in business processes such as administrative, professional, and transactional activities. You will see how the key elements of lean thinking and value-stream mapping apply to such activities by identifying key processes to tackle, drawing an accurate current-state map of each process, applying lean principles to envision a leaner future-state for each process, and implementing the future-state in a way that can be sustained.

Jim Luckman of Lean Transformations Group was the facilitator, (Recent B901 Podcast Participant) did a very good job of combining instruction, case studies and interactivity. LEI is a stickler for interactivity in their workshops and it is a well learned lesson for me. I struggle creating webinars that have interactivity and always wonder if the people on the other side are sleeping or how much other things they are getting done during the webinar ;).  It is a lesson learned.

It is always great to see others present and to receive fresh material. I have spent a great deal of time in the past year constructing Value Stream Mapping processes for marketing. In doing so, I have ventured into many uncharted areas and as a result I have taken certain liberties in my mapping processes. In the workshop I learned or reinforced 2 particular areas that I felt are important to the marketing process.

1. Chunking: When you start creating a Future State Map it is wise to step back and take a more empirical view of the process looking for major outputs or changes in skill requirements. Dividing the Value stream Map in this fashion allows you develop chunks or groupings,. This allows the divided Value Stream to be scrutinized and more importantly better define your customer requirement, customer being the next recipient in the Value Stream. It was even challenging to define who that customer is and what the requirements for that handoff are. It reminded me of how we have been breaking down the Kanban boards and defining the endpoints and the queues. The methodology was a little different but the outcomes were very similar.

2. Heuristic/Transactional: Since this workshop was based on creating a Value stream Map for the Office and Service sector we spent time on the differences that were created in this sector versus manufacturing. I have to admit I struggle with mapping many marketing value streams and this little tip though simple made a great deal of sense to me and solved my problem. Most my problems are a result of combining the Heuristic section of marketing to the Transactional side. The lesson to split the value stream at this point and create 2 separate Value Stream Maps paid for the workshop. It was like not seeing the forest because of the trees. I even feel kind of stupid even saying it but when I review past struggles I have to admit the majority of them were exactly in this area. The ones that there were little struggle with were maps that had naturally divided that area on their own.

I returned to the Lean Problem Solving Workshop facilitated by Tracey Richardson, another B901 Podcast Participant.

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Value Stream Marketing and Marketing Kanban concepts featured on Lean Nation Radio

Exciting News! I will be a guest on the The Lean Nation radio show Monday, July 12th from 4-5pm Est. on 790 AM Talk and Business, hosted by Karl Wadensten.  We're going to discuss Marketing with Lean and more specifically Value Stream Marketing and the Marketing Kanban.  This is an important topic and I’m looking forward to sharing my insights on air to a wide audience of business leaders and change agents.

You can listen to my appearance live on 790AM (Citadel Broadcasting, ABC Affiliate) in Providence, RI.  The show is also globally available via a live audio stream at 790business.com. I would enjoy hearing your opinions and answer your questions, so feel free to call in to the show.  The call-in number is 401-437-5000 or toll free at 888-345-0790.

Can’t tune in live?  The podcast will be available after the show!

The Lean Nation is the hottest new show on 790AM and airs from 4-5pm, weekdays and streams online at 790business.com.  The Lean Nation features real world examples and actionable advice from local and national business leaders on how to reinvent yourself into a lean operation in business and in life.  The show's host, Karl Wadensten, is the president of VIBCO, a Rhode Island manufacturing company. Over the last 3 years VIBCO has created a Lean Revolution, using lean methodologies (based on the Toyota Production System).

Under Karl's leadership, VIBCO is now a high performing business culture where lead times for over 1,300 SKUs have dropped from 4-6 weeks to "same day, next day", inventory has been reduced by more than 50%, over 10,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing floor space is now freed up to accept future growth, and sales are well above industry trends.  These impressive improvements are the result of a workforce that is empowered to improve every day and understands the power of Lean Thinking.  Listen to The Lean Nation to learn how you can get similar results to do more with less!

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Quickest way to deal with a Marketing Constraint, Slice it!

If we find the constraint what is the first thing we want to do, fix it. That’s our natural tendency. Many of us have learned to go through the Theory of Constraint Five Focusing Steps:

1. Identify the system’s constraint.
2. Decide how to exploit the system’s constraint.
3. Subordinate everything else to the above decisions.
4. Elevate the system’s constraint.
5. Don’t allow inertia to become the system’s constraint.

This way we can fix it and increase throughput. In a previous post I stated:

Marketing Kanban, I like to use the constraint or the bottleneck as my control point. You can argue that you have an external constraint, outside of your marketing. If that is true, then the dollars and resources must be allocated appropriately. However, I would argue that there is a constraint within your organizations marketing cycle that is limiting your throughput. I believe that dealing with this constraint is easier, less costly and more efficient than dealing with trying to fill the funnel.

The overriding principle of the Theory of Constraints is that any work done outside of the constraint will not increase throughput. If you take that principle as a fact, than I would venture to say that any segmentation of your marketing that is not based at the constraint will provide little improvement.

Identifying the constraint however can be quite a chore in marketing. Finding it may be one thing and even changing it may be another. However, if the change is not so apparent there are a couple of things that I have learned from software developing people and primarily Donald Reinertsen author of The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development. He suggest when attacking a bottleneck, you may prefer reducing batch size versus adding capacity. In the Marketing Kanban after identifying the constraint we would review the preceding queue. The action of filling that queue would be where we would want to segment our prospects or value stream.

The segmentation does not need to be equal. If you could just identify a portion of your value stream and become more targeted you would gain better and quicker feedback resulting in better management of the constraint. The smaller batch size is a proven method of increasing throughput.

Testing or qualifying a prospect is a key component of effective value stream management. With a reduction of batch sizes you can ask more direct questions of that group that will also allow for better sales management.

These methods lead to better reviews and knowledge of the process. When you are focusing on this process only at the constraint, you will see how this will effectively increase capacity at this point. So before you create a new website, re-do auto responders or ad capacity, you may want to simply slice a portion of your bottleneck creating several smaller segments.

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The Guiding Principles of Value Stream Marketing

On my podcast the other week, I had Robert Martichenko of LeanCor co-author of the Lean Enterprise Institute’s newest lean workbook, Building a Lean Fulfillment Stream. The book builds on the concepts of waste, flow, and pull. This workbook illustrates how to analyze the traditional supply chain as a flowing stream of products and information. Building a Lean Fulfillment Stream provides the steps to a comprehensive, real-life implementation process for optimizing your entire fulfillment stream from raw materials to customers.

In the podcast Robert states that a set of guiding principles must be adhered to or simple chaos may result. Following his lead and using the Lean Fulfillment Guiding Principles for an outline, I developed a set of guiding principles for the Value Stream Marketing. An explanation follows:  

Most companies have a process that moves prospects and customers through a progression such as a marketing funnel or a sales pipeline. This enables an organization to visual the process and give them an idea of how many sales are close to closing or how many people are entering the funnel or even how many are maybe A, B or C players.

The movement is rather complex and could cross many different marketing channels. At the end of the progression, a certain number of prospects become customers and the others are kept in our pipeline till they remove themselves. We even will attempt to enlist referrals, especially from our customers to put more people into the pipeline. This accumulation of prospects makes it difficult for business to understand the progression of their prospects and maybe even their marketing efforts.

Organizations must come to understand that they are building a value stream. Effective management of the pipeline is one of the most critical components in marketing today. Finding the obstacles that hinder flow creates one of the most cost-effective ways of increasing sales. A Marketing Value Stream can be very long and continuously changing. It is almost impossible for managers to evaluate every action taken with detailed analysis. Instead you must create a set of guiding principles that you take for fact and adhere to them. A set of guiding principles for Value Stream Marketing are:

1. Eliminate all the waste in the value stream: Creating flow in the value stream requires all departments and functions in an organization to work in harmony. Focus on the fundamental lean principle of eliminating waste.

2. Make marketing efforts visible to all members of the value stream through a Marketing Kanban: If marketing efforts are visible across the stream, then it is much easier for every participant to plan work.

3. Increase throughput: When a company can increase throughput to the point where it can exceed expectations of the customer, your marketing cycle times are reduced when work in process (number of prospects) in the cycle is reduced.

4. Establish a Marketing Cadence and create level flow: The ultimate goal is to have information move in a predictable, consistent, and uninterrupted manner based on the actual demand of the prospect or customer. This is known as level flow. Level flow reduces variation in processes and tries to spread activities equally over working time. This minimizes the peaks and valleys in movement that create unevenness and overburden, which result in waste.

5. Use pull systems: Pull Marketing systems are a way of introducing the value(achieve) that a prospect /customer would recognize by your involvement(access) within their communities(attract). These 3 levels of engagement evolved to a simple term of Pull Marketing. These three levels of Pull have been wonderfully described in the recent book, The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion. The authors defined these terms as Access, Attract and Achieve.

6. Increase velocity and reduce variation: Velocity is the speed with which information and material move through the value stream. Meeting customer/prospect demand by delivering marketing efforts more frequently increases velocity. This helps to reduce work in process and lead times, which allows you to more easily adjust delivery to meet actual customer requirements.

7. Collaborate and use process discipline: The collaboration of all participants in a value stream is necessary to identify problems in the stream, determine root causes, and develop appropriate countermeasures. To be truly effective, this collaboration must be combined with standard improvement processes and regular PDCA.

What principles do you have in creating a Value Stream in your marketing?

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Why a Lean Startup is hot

Disclaimer: I have participated in many of these threads and really are using them for a little twisted humor of mine. What Continuous Improvement Consultants are talking about:

• One Lean group is arguing about whether to start with 5s or not. I mean seriously after we clean the floor what else is there?
• Another Lean group is running around discussing whether Lean is a wicked disease or not.
• And on numerous threads they are talking about making manufacturing sexy - and I doubt if many of the commenters ever worked on a shop floor.
• Six Sigma guys are still running around defending quality as that is the only thing that makes a difference.
• The Theory of Constraint people are still running around looking for a pile of material and identifying bottlenecks!
• Everyone is still talking efficiencies and culture. And just an opinion, the reason that these platforms fail is not always leadership. These things have to be implementable and pay for themselves or their not worth doing.

What are the Lean start-up people doing? They go after the guys on the fringes and do you know what they find there…the change agents. The people that are willing to stick out their necks to make a difference. Take note, these people are not found in the core of your company, they are probably thinking about leaving it. 

Lean Startups have made their position sexy? They have forged a new path, a new beginning and that attracts followers. I compliment Eric Ries of Lessons Learned, Steve Blank and the rest of crew. You want to know a secret about attracting people on the fringe, watch them and this short video on how it’s done:

I used this video several months ago about another subject but Derek Sivers correlation to what you need to get started was a great insight.  As mentioned, I believe you have quit going to the core to find your change agents. They are not there. I highly recommend this book, The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion which gives you a great foundation on this subject. They talk about shaping the strategies that you may need and they use these five questions to test the robustness of what they call a shaping view:

1. Does the view expressed a perspective regarding the long-term direction of a broad industry or market and highlight what is different in that view from the situation today?
2. Does the view clearly identify attractive business opportunities that can focus the investment of a broad range of participants?
3. Does the view to hide these opportunities explicitly to broad economic, cultural, and technological forces at work on the business landscape?
4. Is the view broad enough to accommodate unexpected developments yet specific enough to provide focus and direction for executives faced with difficult choices?
5. Had the view been aggressively and continuously communicated by senior management to employees and external audiences?

That seems a little wordy for me. I like the questions learned from the Lean Startup crowd, they seemed much easier:

1. What problem are you solving for your customer?
2. Does the customer know they have this problem? 
3. Are your customers actively trying to solve this problem?
4. Do customers have a budget allocated to solve this problem or otherwise trying to spend money to solve it?
5. Are your customers actively spending money, time or effort on solving this problem and failing?

Simplicity and a Crowd

Simplicity is still important. Just as Obama won the presidency on one word, Change. Eric Ries has embodied the Lean Start-up with the word, Pivot. Most consultants lose work for one simple reason: Clarity. 

How simple is your explanation of what you do?

From Derek perspective leadership is oversold, it takes a crowd to create change. How many times have you made the effort to develop that crowd. How many times have you said people don’t get it. I do and how stupid am I for saying that: Real Stupid! Going back to the book, The Power of Pull they talk about having a list of 50. I kind of like that thought. If you could sit down, right now and make a list of 50 people who share the same passion as you about a subject and collaborated with them to solve a customer’s(market) problem.

How effective would be the outcome?