MVP

In the agile development community there is the concept of doing rapid sprints to get to a minimum viable product as fast as possible. Forget trying to come up with the perfect design, the awesome approach, removing all risk. Just get something out there and see what happens. Grab some early innovators! Build a user pool to get feedback from, and release improvements fast and on a regular clip. Fake it until you make it.

I was thinking during the conversation that I was having my engineering team this week, that I need to work on creating the profile of the MVP – the minimum viable person. What does it really take to be minimally viable? Is it just stay alive, work enough to pay the bills and sleep? Or is it something else. What is my minimum viable self?

What is the base functions of who I am? What use cases does the MVP version of myself need to accomplish? I do not believe I have every really considered this concept. So I started thinking through this. I came up with the things that I must do well every day in order to be viable. There is the obvious things. Like Eat Food.

Or is it simple? Eat Food is a use case that I have to perform everyday. It is a essential requirement of being a person – but what about a minimum viable person? In the Eat Food Use Case, I really need to consider what process I follow when eating food that makes me viable. This may sound crazy, and you may think I have gone off my rocker – but stop and think about it for a second. What are the core functions that you must do well every day? Are you working to improve those? Have you even thought about improving them?

If you improve the things that you do every day, you will have a greater impact in your life then just adding some new thing that you do occasionally. For example. I have a new one. It is called Run. I perform this Use Case called Run. Now, what do I have to do to make this concept called run viable? It is not good enough to just Run, I have to run a certain way and with a certain discipline. So what is the minimum viable person that runs?

Not saying you have to have a Run use case, but what are yours? Can you spend a few minutes and think of what those would be?

Eat, Sleep, Meditate, Read, Memorize, Blog, Plan, Serve are a few that I started thinking about. That may sound really simple, but then I started breaking them down and I realized – wow – I just found out what I should be working on.

Seriously, of all the systems that I work on all the time – shouldn’t I have a system for sleep? I sleep every night, and I sleep for 8 hours. If I am going to work on something that will have a great impact on my life, would not that one be the most effective?

Then I started thinking about my work. When I work everyday, are there use cases that I consider for the MVP that works? Yes, there are certainly are. Attend Meetings. That is probably the most common use case of my work life. Have I ever stopped for just a moment and considered, what can I do to be better at this use case? What is the minimum viable person that attends meetings? Is it just dial in and listen on mute and tune out? Certainly not. Do I communicate my intent to the audience before the meeting? Do I communicate what was discussed after the meeting? Do I listen carefully and keep notes on what is said? Do I have a process of capturing the most from each meeting. If I were to improve this use case, I would probably have a serious impact on my work life. This not because meetings are awesome, it is because meetings are something I do every day.

Why not work on the thing that you do ALL THE TIME as opposed to the thing that you never do?

Another one. Write Emails. This one threw me for a loop. Have I ever even thought of what it takes to draft a good email, nope. Then I thought about it for a second and sure enough, I can build a whole use case for the process of writing an email, to help me produce a viable product every time I sit to write an email to someone. I tried it today, and someone got back to me right away and said, that is a great email! I though, huh, what impact would I have on my business life if I made improvements to the thing that I do the most often?

This comes right back to habit formation. Our habits are best if they are focused on improving things we do every day, rather then things we rarely do. I write a blog every day, so that I will become better at writing. That is something I do ever day. I memorize numbers and facts every day for fun, because I am required to recall a lot of information every day. I read inspirational material every day, because I always need inspiration to pass on to others to start conversations frequently. This list is growing, but the important point is that habits should directly assist you in becoming a minimum viable person or MVP.

Guy Reams