As it turned out, there was absolutely no physical, organizational, political, or regulatory barrier to doing an experiment that very day. The only impediment was the ingrained force of habit that led this team to overlook this simple solution. As you’ll see in the next few chapters, this is incredibly common. The problem isn’t that the engineers can’t figure out how to build an MVP; it’s that they’ve never considered it worth doing. When the mental landscape is shaped by management habits, it’s hard to have a breakthrough.
