Episode 95 - 16 Aug 2017
The plan was to run a follow-up experiment. But a spanner was about to be thrown into the works.
Time to pivot!
Remember to grab your FREE The Mundane MVP Cheat Sheet / Worksheet
My orders were clear:
Run an Experiment: a Minimum Viable Experiment.
An Experiment like one we ran previously, with a couple of... optimisations.
What could go wrong?
If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that the experiment I’m referring to was based on Buffer’s Minimum Viable Product.
I call it the Mundane MVP.
The details of a Mundane MVP are in this rather lovely Workbook; you’ll find a link to it on or around this video.
Where was I? Oh yes: Optimisations.
When we ran the experiment a few weeks ago, it performed well in this area (at the top of the chart).
Three ads ran side by side. “Agile Done Right” was the best-performing title. By a clear margin.
The experiment performed less well in the lower area; with only a handful of visits to the Landing page, we didn't have enough data to make a clear determination.
Time then for a new experiment. With five new optimisations mixed in:
Five optimisations, with one aim: to maximise the number of clicks on the Landing Page button.
That was my to-do list.
As you’d expect, I started with the most important item.
No! Of course I didn’t!
The click-counter sounded like fun, so I started there.
Coding done, I started messing around with a new image for the ad.
With all this messing around with code and images, it wasn’t until this week that I faced up to the real work: the words. The copy.
Man. This is not my strong point. Blood, Sweat and Tears.
In the middle of it all, I did something illogical: I typed "Agile Done Right" into Google.
And saw this.
Turns out that “Agile Done Right” is the title of a book.
My first thought was to carry on with the second place title: “Real Life Agile”
Thing is, “Agile Done Right” was a clear winner in the first Minimum Viable Experiment; “Real World Agile” barely beat “Agile That Pays” into third place.
Not a very high level of confidence.
My second thought was to back up and try to find a title that works as well as “Agile Done RIght”
I don’t have a fully-formed Plan C.
And this might be the disappointment talking, but I’m wondering if the Pivot should be more dramatic?
Three possible plans of action. In my place, what would you do?
Would you go for A, B or C? Or would you do something different?
Let me know in the comments below.
Watch "Lean Startup - The Unexpected Pivot + WORKSHEET" on YouTube.