Baby steps
- Richard
- Mar 13, 2020
- 3 min read
Have you ever wondered why they call it baby steps? It's not just because each step is small, but also because sometimes the baby falls down. The same can be seen in any part of life, both personal and business.
When you're building a product, it's hard to just create the whole thing at once. Usually a product consists of many different parts, which all have to be assembled first, and when put together you get your product. These are all baby steps. The main thing you've got to keep in mind while taking each step, is that each step should bring added value to the product. Of course, some steps add more value then the other but that's okay. In agile we call this the minimal viable product.
A common example used to explain agile is a car. You can first build a wheel, then the chassis, then the frame and finally the roof. This seems logical right? But if your customer is looking for a means of transportation from A to B, you might want to start with a skateboard, then a step, a bicycle, a motorcycle and finally a car. Now, every baby step you take in making the car, offers the customer a means of transportation from A to B. The customer doesn't have to wait until the entire product is finished. Of course, this process needs to be clear to the customer or he's going to be in for an unwanted surprise.
The same goes when building a company. You can't just have a company, you'll need to take baby steps. You'll need to do your market research, you'll need to have a service or a product, you'll need to register your company, you might need funding and finally you're going to need customers. These are all steps in to starting a company.
Growing your company works the same way. Just think about space travel for a second, remember the race to the moon? We tried, we failed, we got back up and tried again. And what did Neil Armstrong say when he first stepped on to the moon?
That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind
So we took a lot of baby steps to reach the moon, the start of the space travel business. Then when we finally landed on the moon, our first milestone, Neil Armstrong noticed this was just another baby step in to the business of space travel.
Agile transformations are not any different from this. Usually one team starts, and they play by the rules of whatever framework they picked. And it is very likely this team will fail. They start speaking a different language, and they will no longer find any connection with the rest of the company. But as long as there's someone who gets back up, and starts breaking some rules and trying again, your company will get through its agile transformation, one small step at a time.
Last but not least, there's the growth in people. People might resist agile. This happens, and that's fine, we need to accept this instead of fighting it. Everybody takes their steps in their own tempo. They might just want to see the benefits of taking these steps before actually taking them. There's always going to be pioneers and followers. Would you have stepped on the first air plane? Or are you somebody who wants to see it work before boarding?
So, as you can see, everything in life, and in business is about baby steps. Agile is just a way of making you aware. It sets some guidelines for you to follow. Like sprint goals, to make sure you take the steps in the right direction. And when you fall down, Agile offers retrospectives and reviews to analyse why you fell, so next time you won't.
Learn and adapt, evolve, grow. But take it one baby step at a time.
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