Agile has moved from the team to the enterprise with the goal being business agility. We need a system that takes us from strategies to realization. This has two tightly connected phases – the discovery of what to work on and developing it.
Business has the responsibility of discovering what these small pieces are – both who is being targeted and what value is to be delivered. These are presented to the development group in the product backlog.
What these pieces are is the missing concept I am referring to. Many people are using the term MVP for this, but an MVP is about discovering if a new product is viable. It starts small and grows.
Most large organizations have strategies and initiatives for extending existing products and services. This requires going from big (an initiative) and making it small. This is accomplished by ‘asking what part of an initiative can we deliver sooner?’ This is not just about being small, however. It must also contain all of what’s needed. That is, what shared services, ops, marketing, support is required to achieve value? So it can be thought of as the smallest container of what is needed to provide the quickest realization of value.
We call this the ‘minimum business increment.’
For more on MBIs and how they relate to MVPs, go here.