The Importance of Iteration
From the Voices on Project Management Blog
by Cameron McGaughy,
Lynda Bourne, Kevin Korterud, Peter Tarhanidis, Conrado Morlan, Jen Skrabak, Mario Trentim, Christian Bisson, Yasmina Khelifi, Sree Rao, Soma Bhattacharya, Emily Luijbregts, David Wakeman, Ramiro Rodrigues, Wanda Curlee, Lenka Pincot, cyndee miller, Jorge Martin Valdes Garciatorres, Marat Oyvetsky
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by Christian Bisson, PMP
We’ve all encountered them on a project or two: stakeholders that want everything right away.
The result of this rush is often lots of money invested, a tight schedule, negative impact on the quality and frustrated people. But, carefully planned iterations of a project can help avoid the negativities of rushed efforts.
Here’s why:
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
A well thought out MVP is the first iteration of your project. It means planning for the smallest scope possible, keeping in mind that it still needs to bring business value.
Let’s say you’re building a website. In this scenario, you’d identify the main features your website should have — based on goals — and focus on those instead of spreading the effort on all the features that might seem great to have.
There are many advantages to the MVP approach:
- It can be deployed much faster compared to the complete scope.
- You can monitor your project in action (ex. Google Analytics).
- You can gather valuable feedback from people who use it.
Room to Adjust
Since you haven’t spent all the budget on the entire scope — and you now have precious data gathered from various sources — you can plan based on facts rather than hypotheses.
For example, after the MVP is deployed, you might have planned to work on a new feature. However, if new data suggests that the main feature of your project is not quite user friendly and needs adjustments, you can prioritize the adjustment and quickly add more value to your project compared to adding a new feature that might be less important.
Deploy When Ready
The MVP is only the first of many iterations. Do not fall back into the trap of building everything before you deploy your first update. Using the example above, if the first feature is actively affecting the quality of your project, adjust it and deploy right away. That way you will gain the added value of your improvement right away.
Some might argue that deployments cost money so you shouldn’t deploy all the time, and it’s a fair point. But keep in mind that the cost of those well-planned deployments are negligible compared to all the budget you can waste on a misfocused effort or a wrong hypothesis.
Taking a step-by-step approach to project management is crucial to the long-term success of projects. How do you manage the iterative or MVP approach?
Posted
by
Christian Bisson
on: November 04, 2017 01:29 PM |
Permalink
Comments (12)
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Drew Craig
Sr. Agile & Product Coach| Vanguard
Philadelphia, Pa, United States
Absolutely agree. However accomplished, smaller, incremental deliveries satisfy the customer, ensure value is delivered, and ensure direct correlation b/t deliverables and need.
Thanks, Christian, for the article.
Georgia Harris
GLH Project Manager| Independent Consultant
Pa, United States
Kevin Coleman
Subject Matter Expert, Author, Speaker and Strategic Advisor| - Insights
Pa, United States
I am afraid the 'I want it now' mentality is going to get worse!
These days costly development cycles do not align with market demand, that's the reason Agile focuses on being relevant and business growth by capturing maximum market share and that is achieved by bringing product to market faster than the competitors. Launching an MVP in iterations and building it on customer feedback keeps it up with the need & demand of customer. It also helps the companies to tweak and adjust to customers expectations.
Rami Kaibni
Community Champion
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates
New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Indeed, I have seen some major system implementation projects starting to adopt the agile methodology. Working closely with users and enabling the project team to gather and meet the requirements. Win-win for the client and project team.
Does sound like a good Agile candidate.
Stéphane Parent
Self Employed / Semi-retired| Leader Maker
Prince Edward Island, Canada
In some cases we're beyond 'I want it now" and into 'I want it yesterday'. And they're deadly serious.
Frances Kerr
Associate Program Manager| PreSonus Audio Electronics
Baton Rouge, La, United States
I agree as well. It can be challenging to get all stakeholders to agree on what the MVP should contain and what will be in a second iteration.
Ezara Penning
Systems Administrator I| Lincoln Land Community College
Springfield, Il, United States
A very interesting article. I can see the advantages of the MVP and how it can be leveraged.
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