Another Lean Inception case – project cancelled three weeks after the MVP release.
The Lean Inception book readers and the people participating on the book training are always asking about cases and stories. So here it goes a short and nice story about a big success case (or failure, depending how you look at it).
I facilitated a Lean Inception for a team in September.
The context on that inception, a team that would build an internal tool for a large organisation. Some of the conversations and negotiations prior to the inception was the decision to build instead of buying a tool for solving the problem.
It was a typical lean inception: 5 days, lots of conversations and the team was aligned about the MVP by day 4.
On the showcase, the team shared the plan going forward with all the stakeholder who gave a thumbs up for the MVP scope and release plan (the MVP canvas was very clear about it). And the overall product strategy (the features sequencer depicted the MVP and its increments, given all goes fine).
The MVP was to be delivered by December 20th, and it would be released to only two of the approximately one hundred internal teams.
The MVP was release on December 20th and the team celebrated its delivery success.
On the first week of January, the team got an email informing about the project cancelation (in fact the team was redirect to another project).
The summary of the executive decision: with the MVP release and the data about its usage, the main stakeholders reverted their original decision. They decided that, given what the data had shown them (including a feedback from results form the early adopters), it was bettor to stop building, and buy a tool: Buy, do not build.
So this was it. Another case/story about a a delivery project a few months after a Lean Inception.
