Important Concepts I Learned from “Inspired” (Part 1)
I have been reading the book “Inspired” and I am half way through and fascinated with the concepts and ideas that Marty presents. I feel like my entire way of thinking is being transformed and my drive and passion for technology and innovation are being accelerated. There are many interesting points presented by the author, but there were two points that stood out to me most, which I found very powerful. I will be covering these below in this post.
“Prototype” not “Product” in MVP
Marty presents real-life examples about the discovery and delivery within organisations. One of the key aspects he mentioned revolved around how he believes the word “Product” in “Minimum Viable Product” should be replaced with “Prototype” and I feel that this is simple yet highly effective. The reason why he suggests this is because when members of an organisation decide to produce an “MVP”, it’s generally assumed that the product is stable when in reality it is usually not production ready. This tends to result in a large amount of resources and man hours being used, for a product that in the end barely satisfies the requirements and is not sales ready! Marty suggests that an “MVP” should be used to provide the customers with the ability to start giving early feedback, which can be fed back to the engineers and used to develop the product to a production ready state.
Therefore, by simply assuming that you will be creating a “Minimum Viable Prototype” provides a new viewpoint. It is clear that when creating an “MVP”, it will not be distributable, but it is a demonstrable prototype of the product that is ready to be shown to the customer. The benefit of this is that it requires fewer resources, it is fast and great for learning. Therefore, with this approach, organisations could be creating multiple prototypes on a weekly basis depending on the size of the organisation.
“missionaries” rather than “mercenaries”
Another point mentioned by Marty which is very powerful and should be true to all organisations in the perfect tech world, is that organisations should aim to create multiple teams of “missionaries”, not “mercenaries”. The author describes “missionaries” as those who are visionaries that drive innovation and ideas and “mercenaries” as those who do what they are told to do.
Traditionally, most organisations would work in a very hierarchical manner which is composed of the CEO, manager, project manager, designers, engineers etc. The way this would work is the CEO would handle the business matters, the manager would overlook the teams, the project manager would feel the pressure from the manager, taking all the burden of discovery while the engineers will wait to be given commands. The problem with this is that the engineers who are very important in the organisation and needed for delivery of the product are mercenaries on the side. When as a matter of fact they have a lot to offer. The author discusses breaking the bridge between the project manager and engineers and having the team of engineers contributing toward the ideas, exploring ideas and being visionaries in the organisation from discovery to delivery, creating products that customers love.
The book implies that managers should not be telling the engineers what to do, but engineers and project managers should be working on an equal level with the engineers guiding the team throughout the process of development. This enables all members of a team to share ideas and express their thoughts. This approach can be highly effective because the engineers are actually the ones that can come up with some of the best ideas because of their specialist knowledge.
