Lean Inception
The term Lean reflects its purpose: to eliminate everything that does not define the product at that stage (architecture, project plan, market analysis) and to focus solely on what is needed to align the team and start building.
Origin
Paulo Caroli developed and refined the Lean Inception over more than 300 facilitations with teams from different contexts. He identified two situations in which the workshop is especially valuable:
- Large projects: the Lean Inception makes it possible to get started quickly and move toward a lean way of working, with early iterations designed to discover which features users truly value.
- Smaller organizations: startups use it to move from an idea already validated with pre-software MVPs to an actual software product.
What it is and what it is not
The Lean Inception is specifically about understanding the MVP. It does not replace:
- Ideation sessions.
- Customer research.
- Architecture review.
- Competitive analysis.
How it fits with those other activities depends on the context of the organization and the project.
Workshop agenda
The image below shows an example of a typical agenda. It should not be taken as fixed: it is a reference for how the activities can flow throughout the week.
Typical activities during the week include:
- Defining the product vision.
- Describing personas (target users).
- Identifying product features.
- Technical, UX, and business review.
- Sequencing features.
- Defining the MVP canvas.
Common mistake
Treating the Lean Inception as a substitute for user research. The workshop starts from hypotheses about the user and the market: if those hypotheses have not been validated beforehand with real users, the MVP that comes out of the session may be perfectly aligned with the team's beliefs and completely disconnected from the customer's needs. The Lean Inception is most useful when the team already has some knowledge of the user; if that knowledge does not exist, prior research is essential.
Resources
🏦 Skill Agile InceptionState of the art and development guide · Skill Arena
📄 Product Owner v.2.0Free download [in Spanish] · Scrum Manager
References
- Caroli, Paulo. (2019). Lean Inception. Creando conversaciones hacia un producto exitoso [Lean Inception: Creating Conversations Toward a Successful Product, in Spanish]. Editora Caroli.
See also
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