In previous posts I discussed the MVP-VOC-pivot cycle that the lean-startups model uses, a model in which 1) you assume you don’t understand what customers want, but that 2) you can get to that understanding by implementing a “Minimum Viable Product” (“MVP”) that 3) you then test against the Voice-of-Customer (“VOC”) and 4) change (pivot) as a result, with 5) this process repeated until you obtain a good product-customer fit.
Before I go on to more discussions about products and markets, I want to take a minute to point out that this MVP-VOC-pivot cycle is applicable not just to products but also to teams, and that just as there’s a pivotspace for products, there’s also one for teams — call it “teamspace.”
Consider the two-member team of co-equals in the illustration (see Spider Monkeys), the smallest team configuration there is. If the operant theory is that a startup doesn’t understand its product until it tests a minimal implementation (MVP) against the market, why not apply the same theory to the team configuration, and assume there will be a first “Minimum Viable Team” (“MVT”) that will succeed more or less well and, as a result, will be quickly reconfigured to a different MVT, say MVT2, and so on.
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There’s a reason I’m introducing this concept, and a very particular reason I’m introducing it early — startups succeed or fail based mostly on the team and how well it executes, and not on the technology, no matter how cool. And therefore it’s critical to pay at least as much attention to the evolution of the team as it pivots through teamspace as it is to track how a product evolves through product pivotspace.
Consider the “Business Model Canvas” (“BMC”) depiction of the lean-startups process:
This is the standard illustration you’ll come across for the lean-startups methodology, the upper right corner shows the core product-market component (“Value Propositions” and “Customer Segments” respectively) along with the ties that bind the product to the customer — “Customer Relationships” and “Channels.”
You’ll note that, despite being the canonical illustration of the lean-startups trifecta of MVP-VOC-pivot, there’s no good way to show the sequence of iterations through pivotspace. Instead there’s an emphasis on the other things that tie in to the development of the product-market fit, specifically the resources required to make product (“Key Partners,” “Key Activities,” “Key Resources”), as well as money inputs and outputs (“Cost Structure” and “Revenue Streams”). These resources certainly are critical to a business and are therefore worth teasing out, but again the illustration doesn’t allow for an exploration of the MVP-VOC-pivot iteration cycle for product.
I don’t want to create a strawman here, certainly other versions of the BMC attempt to solve the this problem, although as I’ll discuss in a future post these alternate formats are still quite inadequate to the task. But regardless of the ability of the BMC diagram to inform a product development path through pivotspace, you can see that the BMC provides absolutely no framework for understanding the teamspace, or the path of the team as it evolves from Minimally Viable Team 1 to MVT2 to MVT3 and so on to a deployed team that matches market pull just as the product must match market pull.
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I don’t know why the lean-startups methodology doesn’t provide an explicit exploration of the human side of product iteration. Based on my own experiences as a business mentor for both the National “iCorps” lean-startups program (in Washington, DC) and at the regional New York City and environs “NYCRIN” program, I’d say the problem is at least partly that it’s like trying to build a new design of a plane at the same time as the plane under construction is going down a runway also being built, with the plane under the instructions of a control tower being staffed. Oh, and the plane’s running on tanks of gas that are being filled. And it’s on fire.
In other words, when a company is trying to get started there are more than enough problems to deal with, and certainly the lack of the product matching the market is a key one that rightly gets attention. But you can’t ignore the evolution of the team, and the lean-startups model is easily adapted to a team iteration cycle of MVT-VOC-pivot, a cycle which can be explored in every bit as productive a way as is the similar product cycle. This exploration of teamspace may start with a spider monkey dynamic duo, but after repeated pivots and tests of the refigured teams against the market a trio of monkeys in a hierarchical org chart structure may result, with each adapted (via hand size) for different tasks in the developing organization. (Image at Free Clipart)
More on this in future posts.