Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value

by Melissa Perri

Since The Lean Startup was published, companies have been adopting experimentation techniques, yet many of them have done so for the wrong reasons. They all are trying to build the ideal Minimum Viable Product (MVP), an experimentation concept introduced in the book. I asked my Twitter followers how they defined an MVP at their company. A bunch of people replied, but one follower summed it up well: “I was told by two separate clients that whatever is built in the first release is an MVP.” This type of thinking is exactly what lands us in the build trap. When we use an MVP only to get a feature out quicker, we’re usually cutting corners on a great experience in the process. Thus, we sacrifice the amount we can learn from it. The most important piece of the MVP is the learning, which is why my definition has always been “the minimum amount of effort to learn.” This keeps us anchored on outcomes rather than outputs. Due to the misconception of this term, I have stopped using MVP altogether. Instead, I talk more about solution experimentation. These experiments are designed to help companies learn faster. Here we are experimenting to learn, not building to earn. We are not creating stable, robust, and scalable products. Often, we don’t know what the best solution would even be when we begin experimenting. That is the point in doing this work.