The Lean Startup history - increase gradually levels of validation and product fidelity

To increase odds of success and cost of development, be deliberate on what you want to prove and when

One the main early-stage mistakes is to work on the wrong thing, usually too late or too early on a parts of the product that is not what is needed right now.

The MVP approach aims to a) be deliberate and ambition enough on the things to prove to move the needle of impact while b) doing the minimal effort to reach this impact to reduce the cost.

Pave the way with several short product milestones mixing business and technical

To enhance odds of success, a key elements is increase the piloting of the company launch with short intermediate business milestones:

• Each business milestone translate an impacts for the customer and a new level of product validation - even a small victory must be celebrated internally and externally to build the momentum - Example of milestone - “We manage internally to deliver the business process X with 10x more value”
• Each milestone makes the next one easier: reaching a tangible results internally or externally brings validation and increase the level of confidence, of understanding and of focus on what to build next ;
• Each milestone delivers an intermediate customer results: fast release keeps the customer momentum and nurture the customer relationships with concrete customer-oriented delivery, efficient communication and tangible outcomes
• Milestones increase focus, quality and speed - writing deliberately different milestones enhance:
  • focus - by being cristal clear on what to build now and what to build later
  • quality - by being cristal clear on expected outcomes and agreed level of quality
  • timeframe/speed - by being cristal clear on what to focus and expected level of quality
  • overall speed - by enhancing the team alignement and understanding.
• Business and technical milestones balance tactically the customer momentum and the tech feasibility - milestones aims to orchestrate in parallel the customer path to ensure satisfaction and the technical path to ensure feasibility ;
• Business and Technical milestones allow to oversee the best-path, identify trade-offs and deliberately work on them - anticipating the next milestone allows to foresee what technical and sales challenges have to be anticipate and how.

Reducing the timeframe between milestones increase the control of the company trajectory

Each follow-up milestones became clearer as you progress on the previous one:

• getting customer validation brings customer confidence and alignement into what to build next
• getting additional visibility about what works where the complexity lies, what brings value will bring far more clarity about what to build next and how