What is the role of learning in business agility?
The purest (and harshest) reality is that many businesses and projects fail. There are several reasons why this happens: the steps take longer than expected, the competitor launches another product earlier, the market changes, etc. But this is nothing new. Especially in the software area, where the agile movement began.
In February 2001, in the United States, seventeen software developers started a movement that would later serve as the basis for creating agile frameworks and methods. Dissatisfied with the results obtained from adopting existing methodologies, the group created a statement of values and principles that represents a better way of developing software: the Agile Manifesto.
This manifesto is made up of a set of four values and twelve principles, and represents the essence of agile. In other words, these points should guide the options and alternatives regarding practices, roles, ceremonies, methods or frameworks.
Below are the four values:
● Individuals and interactions over processes and tools;
● Working software over comprehensive documentation;
● Collaboration with the client over negotiating contracts;
● Responding to changes over following a plan.
Now, let’s talk about the last of them: But respond to which changes? How do you know what’s happening around you? How can we understand how far we have come and where we should go? Well, that depends on our ability to learn from our users, our customers!
“Think big, start small, learn fast.”
This phrase represents the role of learning in business agility. You need to develop the simplest solution that will be created and made available to users to validate an idea, collect essential data to validate the direction of your business and generate learning to move forward.
In the world of digital products this has a name and a nickname: Minimum Viable Product, the MVP. The concept of MVP emerged in the Lean StartUp movement at the end of the first decade of this century.
Using an analogy, imagine that your final product is like a cake. To do so, you have to think about all the layers, right?
Antes da virada do século, e das metodologias ágeis, o comum era planejar e construir todo o bolo, e somente entregá-lo quando estivesse completo.
Before the turn of the century, and agile methodologies, it was common to plan and build the entire cake, and only deliver it when it was complete.
However, using the agile methodology, you can plan the entire cake, but deliver it slice by slice. This way, the cake — your product — is built and delivered incrementally. This allows someone to verify that the cake is being constructed and delivered as planned.
And where does the MVP fit into this story? It’s like a cupcake, a smaller, simpler (but still viable) version of cake. This way, the consumer can try it and decide whether they like it or not. In this case, there is no need for someone to check whether it is what the customer wants — the cupcake is complete and the consumer must try it and decide.
You can even make more than one cupcake, with different flavors so that the best one is chosen. This will allow your product to be validated or directed to the best path.
In this analogy, the cupcake is what you can minimally create to generate learning and check the direction of your business. With the data and insights from early adopters (the people who ate the cupcakes), you will evolve your MVP and your business. Learning, validating and increasing, evolving with agility and in constant tune with your business’s audience.
But the concept of MVP and this way of evolving a business based on agility and learning does not only work for digital products. Agile and MVP emerged in the world of software and digital products, in the same way that much knowledge about project management emerged in the manufacturing industry during the Second Industrial Revolution.
However, many lines of work and areas use knowledge that originally emerged in the manufacturing industry. The same is happening with agility, Lean Startup, Lean Inception, Design Sprint, MVP, among others. There are several business areas applying these new concepts and achieving great success.
So do like successful companies in the digital world and achieve great success through agile: use Lean Inception to align a group in search of building the MVP. Think big, start small, learn fast!
