So the way I’ve been thinking about this is a little differently. If you go back to what MVP is — it’s supposed to be an experiment and there are supposed to be outcomes for what you want to learn.

If you put up an MVP, it shouldn’t be “because we ran out of time” but more “because we wanted to learn something”. It’s important to re-frame MVPs in this light to make sure they don’t just get shipped in a cargo-cult of eternal MVP after MVP.

So I’m trying to make sure that gathering learnings from MVPs — and then actioning those learnings — is the main kind of flow of UX work. I’m trying to make this the accepted way that UX does any work. It’s not easy!

It’s hard to shift “ship now, worry later” thinking into this kind of flow but I think it’s the only way to actually do good work. Throwing one designer around on MVP after MVP without any follow-ups is just a bad way to structure a team (if it’s done intentionally, which it usually isn’t) — UXers or PMs should be encouraged to have ownership over a feature or product line, allowing them to improve on it over time.

It seems logical, but it’s so hard to get this happening in small orgs.