Many product teams roll out their Minimum Viable Products (MVP) with an aim to test the market and then to “continuously improve” the product to make it work.
However, one of the important goals of rolling out MVP is actually to test the market and then to abandon certain features, such that the team can focus on the right things but not the wrong ones.
“Let’s create a great customer journey!”, we all heard about this before in various design / project meetings.
My point is, we cannot create a journey for our customers, but can only facilitate the customers to create a great journey by themselves … and each of these journeys is different.
One trap we keep falling into, is we think customers start their journeys from one end, and then end in another end, flawlessly.
In reality, each customer has his / her own journey with us from any touchpoint we are offering, to another touchpoint with or without a successful journey / transaction / interaction. The customer will just bounce back and forth among various touchpoints we developed for them. Therefore, the team shall design a whole customer journey WEB or MAP, instead of just a simple one-direction customer journey.
#digitaltransformation
Many companies embark on their innovation journey by creating an Innovation department, hire a new chief / geek to lead the team, renovate the office to make it cozy and colourful, employ a new design methodology etc. etc.
What we really shall do first however is to abandon things … aged old mindset, archaic thinking, obsoleted KPIs, and organizational red tape.
What’s your take ?
“Fail fast and learn fast” may be true, but it’s a bit too cliche, isn’t it ?
Every product team says they shall ship quickly with a MVP, and it shall be a team culture where people have the freedom to fail, such that with each failure the team can learn something that enables success.
However, to encourage product team to try and learn, the key is not about failing fast but to fail (if you have to) with a minimal cost. So how can we lower the cost of failure ?
The answer is a combination of cloud based infrastructure, API / microservices technology, data sandbox, UI / UX prototyping tool, agile development, group of targeted beta testers, robust security framework and relevant KPIs.
Let’s fail fast, and learn faster.
Digital transformation is hard.
Even though one of the most popular answers in recent months to the question “Who led the digital transformation of your company ?” is “COVID-19”, the fact is it only moves the needle a little bit for most companies. Reasons being that they are still struggling with traditional KPIs, poor data, legacy processes, hiring freezes, budget cut, multi-level governance models etc. etc.
However, the hardest part is still the fact that most teams think or decide beforehand that transformation can’t be done.
No, with right people and right mindset, it can be done.
Give #digitaltransformation a chance.
M.Y. Lessons Learnt 