The #1 lesson I wish I’d learned sooner as a PM at an early-stage startup
Or, the MVP: Minimal Viable Process
Rewind to 2016: I’ve just joined a small startup as the first product manager. I read up on everything I can about frameworks, principles and good practises. I soak up all the articles and podcasts about strategy, OKRs, customer development, and other fancy buzzwords. I’m excited — it all seems to make so much sense after my previous role at a digital agency, where waterfall development was the norm.
But what I failed to realise was that the majority of this (genuinely) good advice and information was aimed at companies that already had initial traction and were at least showing signs of Product/Market fit.
I was being asked to create 12-month product roadmaps and OKRs for the next quarter, so I’d dutifully go off and spend my precious time researching and formulating the ultimate strategy. We’d launch the plan but within a couple of weeks it was all thrown out of the window because a key new learning or opportunity had presented itself, and now rendered my plan null and void.
And it kept on happening! I was wasting so much time strategising and planning, and not executing.
Eric Ries, the guy who started the whole Lean Startup thing, wrote that:
a startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.
It’s clear to me now, but those “conditions of extreme uncertainty” are simply not compatible with long-term planning.
The MVP: Minimal Viable Process
In those early days, we had very limited people, money and time. We should have been focusing everyone and everything on the main job at hand: building and learning as quickly as possible.
In this situation your planning process should be simple and very short-term and your software development process needs to be as super-lightweight as possible, enabling the whole team execute and learn quickly.
Maybe you’re thinking this is all very obvious (although if that was the case, you’ll probably have stopped reading by now) — and it is obvious, at least with hindsight. But at the time, I couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
If you are or have been in a similar position, does any of this resonate? Let me know in the comments.
In forthcoming articles I will outline some of the lightweight processes that have worked for me over the years.
