The Game of Inches

ACTION 3: Test and measure

‘Sometimes we'll sit down and we'll go through how that could have been done bette'r.

Shane Kelly, Kelly Engineering

Starting is important, but how do you judge whether what you are starting will work? Hopefully, by this stage you will have grasped that there is no magic formula, but there are some very useful guidelines to follow. There are those who have gone before us to blaze the trail, leaving clear signposts to help direct us. But the most important part of the answer lies in testing and measuring everything you do. And the challenge is to do this, step by step, in small chunks that serve the bigger picture. In this chapter we'll look at some examples of how others do it, and also at some clever concepts that work really well and that you can readily adopt. First among these is a very clever concept known as minimum viable product (MVP).

MVP

Rather than releasing a product, service or innovation in its entirety, with all the bells and whistles, the minimum viable product (MVP) principle means working out the minimum features needed to ensure its viability. In other words, you need to assess the minimum product you will have to create, or the minimum thing you will have to do, for a positive outcome. Clever.

An MVP might be as simple as creating an order form for a new product to see if your customers are interested before you even create the product itself. The advantage is that before you outlay the time, money and other resources, you ...