Minimalism in Product Development: Involve’s journey to making processes simple

Divanshu Kumar
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read

We started Involve 2 years back. From its first pilot, which required a team of 12 people to manage one batch of 60 students, to today when 1 person (STM) manages two schools at once, the whole process has gone through an enriching journey of being stripped to its essentials. This reminds me of the truss problems I solved in my sophomore year of engineering where we had a support structure that built the truss and we needed to identify zero force truss, removal of which will not have a significant effect on the system.

Less is more. Source: Google

As we discuss and argue every day to improve our operational processes and understand more and more about Peer Teaching and students potential, we are astonished to discover the extent to which the process can be simplified. Of course, there are some key elements without which the structure won’t even stand a breeze, but if you get those elements right, my belief is, we will be able to protect the truss in all cyclones.

My only worry (or more like concern) is that the time period of our learning cycle is quite high. And for a sector like education where any impact takes as less as a year to show, and acceptance of change ultimately comes down to behavior and culture, it becomes challenging to convince people of the intangibles. Peer Teaching is not a new concept, but it’s implementation and delivery is. We can’t assume anything. We have to work with the stakeholders, in diversity to understand why we are getting the kind of results. And with every eureka moment, it feels like we are just scratching the surface to find the extent to which we can develop students. With innovation as one of our core values, we are determined to try out our beliefs and test them on the ground, even if it means we have a lot of failures.

That’s the journey which has been most interesting. That adrenaline rush of risk-taking in that sensitive environment where any wrong move will close the doors for us forever! That proud feeling when an 8th-grade student surprises everyone with the passion and quality of his teaching. Did I mention that none of us come from a formal education degree or professional background as such? Well, now you know. While it definitely is a drawback, it does help us sometimes in not having any bias or assume anything. For us, iterations didn’t come intuitively. Sometimes, we could see having an extra person/resource doesn’t add much value, but most of the times it is either because we wanted to reduce the human dependency as much as possible, or sometimes it was budget constraints. This was the journey which taught me the real-life implementation of the Pareto rule. Going back and forth to find the product-market fit (almost there), we have tried many things, both in program design and program presentation for customers, and that’s when I could see minimalism into practice. And I think similar is the case with all product developments. We initially start with an assumption, over-assuming sometimes, test it with the market, and go on a reiteration journey until we find the right product for the right market! Let’s hope we succeed in that :)

Skandha, an 8th grader teaching 5th graders without any support

Learnings: In this journey, we learned about processes which should be our core expertise and others that should definitely be outsourced. We learned not just about developing a product but to build a sustainable business around it (though it will take time for us to go around that). We learned about how everything boils down to the right set of people that you have with you in your journey. And most importantly, we learned that building an organization is not a 100m race, it’s a marathon. You go slow if you must, but ensure you make strategic moves which are better for the company in the long run!

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