Agencies are brilliant at the show. Pitch, win, sprint, unveil. I have lived that loop many times. The room loves the work, we ship, everyone exhales. Then the real world turns up.
Users don't behave as the opinions suggested, support pings light up, KPIs wobble, but the budget is spent.
No room to learn, little room to tune. Just an expensive first guess.
Product teams handle that moment differently. Not because they are smarter, but because they expect to be wrong at first. They put out the smallest useful thing, watch what people do, then move. The first loop is a bet, not a victory lap. That mindset travels well into agency land.
Call it an MVP if you like. To me it is a smaller promise with a clearer point. Fewer vanity features, more purposeful bets. Focus on a clear goal. You buy time to discover the bit that actually moves a metric. Clients feel progress because progress is visible, not hidden in a roadmap.
Short cycles help. Week by week, not quarter by quarter. Ship, observe, adjust. The drama fades, the quality goes up, and the team stops living on adrenaline. You swap heroics for powerful habits.
The glue is user reality. A handful of tests, a scraping of analytics, an hour with end users. It is not theatre, it is a compass. Stakeholders matter, but they are not the only signal. Data crushes consensus. When insight arrives before commitment, you avoid the most expensive rework.
Do this for a while, and things feel different. Clients stick around because their work keeps getting better in public.
We don't all need to become startups to achieve this. We just need to trade the big reveal for a steady drumbeat of delight and learning. That is where the outcomes are. That is where real success is.
- Harry Bailey - I craft trusted project delivery approaches for digital and creative agencies.
