Minimum Viable Planning

I sense this might be a rehash of a lot of the stuff Neil has written around agile planning but thought I'd share anyway.

I have just finished reading Eric Ries' excelent new book 'The Lean Startup'.  Esentially it's a very readable, down to earth, practical crash course in lean development.  It's about working out how you can accelerate thorugh a loop of validated learning as quickly as possible with the minimum amount of waste.

Now there has been a lot of stuff written decrying the sloppy way lean (and agile) processes have been misapropriated by the marketng world.  But I think there is an important lesson in the lean process for planners and the development of strategy.

At the heart of the lean process lies the idea of the minimum viable product: the most basic thing you can put out into the world to test a hypothesis or assumption and get validated learning from the real world.  I believe that in the faster world we live in today, and the relatively ponderous way we (the ad agency industry) produce work, what needs to lie at the heart of communication development is minimum viable planning.

What is this?

It's about doing the minimum amount of work needed to get to, or inspire, an idea.  It's about cutting down the waste - things like deliberating adjective soup and brand vegetables for 3 months.

It's about generating hypotheses that can be tested, not sitting in an ivory tower with a damp towel on your head waiting for the answer to appear like divine inspiration.

It's about making stuff that can be tested in the real world, not running weeks of focus groups to hear people talk about how they think they think or might behave.

It's about making as few charts as possible to explain a strategy or idea - get to the work

It's about understanding that strategy has to evolve and morph over time (whilst being aware there's a danger that this could become an excuse for superficiality).

It's a bias to doing over thinking.  

It's about doing stuff to learn stuff.

It's more like experimentation than planning as we know it.

 

Comments

[gemma]

All this isn't that far from what Planners who are stretched across too many projects or working on clients with tiny budgets have been doing for years. Yay for doing-the-best-you-can-with-the-time-and-budget-available.

[Gareth]

Perhaps gemma but i'm not sure - this is about a chosen approach, not we have no time. it's about speed and agility and getting to better ideas quicker (and not wasting time and effort on the stuff that doesn't work/isn't important).

[Iain]

You lazy bastard.

;-)

[David]

I am surprised to this day by how willing people are to fuss over their adjective soup...

I urge you to visit Diego Rodriguez's blog, metacool. Diego is a partner at IDEO. His "Innovation Principles" will resonate with you as the approach you outline above shares many similar concerns and objectives. Here's a link to principle #1: http://tinyurl.com/cpc57s

[Brett Macfarlane]

Removing the artificial layer of "consumer research" between the birth of ideas and the real world is a potent idea, terrifying for many. With procurement officers squeezing the last few drops of water out of advertising's rocks there may be business sense to adopt MVP (did you make that acronym on purpose...)

This morning when the Guardian made their newslist public, as a fortnight experiment (http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/insideguardian/2011/oct/10/guardian-newslist) I wondered how could advertising bring the real world more deeply into the strategic and development process.

Not in a lazy make our ad for us way. But in a how do we go about making what we make in a different way so we end up with something different or better than before.

[alina]

agree

[HP Print Cartridge]

Now that is what you call a very interesting blog and a very nice guideline that will serve also as a tip for us.Thanks for sharing this one.

[Moncler Pas Cher]

Aujourd'hui le réchauffement global est un fait indiscutable, et le temps chaud autour du monde année après année continuera d'être misen scène. Le visage du réchauffement climatique à la vie, le travail humain et la production d'apporter à la crise plus grave

[Printer Cartridge]

I am so enjoying these interesting to read these blog and provide some tips and strategy for improving the business and provide new way for thinking ideas.It can causes the traffic at your website.

[rc helicopter]

Impressive blog! -Arron

[Printer Supplies]

now thats definitely an opinion to count