Project Management

The Most Compelling Reasons for Using the Minimum Business Increment

From the Manifesting Business Agility Blog
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This blog concerns itself with organizations moving to business agility—the quick realization of value predictably and sustainably, and with high quality. It includes all aspects of this—from the business stakeholders through ops and support. Topics will be far-reaching but will mostly discuss FLEX, Flow, Lean-Thinking, Lean-Management, Theory of Constraints, Systems Thinking, Test-First and Agile.

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I have found the Minimum Business Increment (MBI) to be one of the most useful concepts in 20+ years of doing some form of Agile, An MBI is the smallest increment of value that can be created for which value can be realized by an internal or external customer. MBIs are defined from initiatives for specific market segments or customers. They are a focus on what to build and release the quickest.

Whereas MVPs are about discovering whether a new product is viable and what it should be, MBIs are used to define the smallest increment of value to realize for existing products. MVPs are typically built by small teams that can pivot, whereas MBIs are used to coordinate the multiple teams required to create them. MBIs can also be used to help define dedicated product teams for the initiatives they come from. 

Cost of delay (and therefore WSFJ) can be more effectively done on MBIs than on epics, since not all of an epic will be released at one time and features often are not releasable on their own.

Multiple teams can align around MBIs when making decisions on which item to work on next. While true for features, multiple teams should not be required to build a feature.

Summary in table form:

Posted on: April 28, 2020 10:59 AM | Permalink

Comments (7)

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Eduin Fernando Valdes Alvarado Project Manager| F y F Fabricamos Futuro Villavicencio, Meta, Colombia
Very interesting., thanks for sharing

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Phyo Papa Experienced Project Management| MBA (project management)| Myanmar Koei International Ltd Kawasaki, Japan
I got new knowledge from it. Thank you

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Joshua Yoak Evanston, Il, USA
There is always intense focus on MVP and when you are supposed to see it, it falls short. This is intriguing.

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Stephen Buck Somerville, Tn, USA
Insightful, thank you!

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Wassim Bouaziz Project Manager| Vermeg Tunis, Tunisia
Very insightful, thanks Al !

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Darren Paladino Engagement Director| Salesforce Denver, Co, USA
Joshua's note here is important about the MVP. Getting to a release early for feedback and requirement refinement to me is an important step. What do you see in the requirement identification quality when it falls sort?

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Al Shalloway Founder and CEO| Success Engineering Edmonds, Wa, USA
MVPs and MBIs are both important. MVPs are when you are discovering what a product should be. MBIs are about extending existing products. See the link in the first line for more.

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