A heaping pile of new technology does not a business solution make. That is not to say cloud, serverless computing and open-source software tools are useless. But defining a business problem before going shopping can drastically reduce time to value, according to Stephanie Trunzo (pictured), worldwide vice president of IBM Cloud Garage at IBM Corp.

“People get excited about new technologies, and so often it’s like a solution looking for a problem,” she said. Cloud Garage promotes an “outside-in” approach to choosing technologies. Businesses need to look at their product or service the way a customer would. Then they can ask, how could this be better? What technologies could improve it?

Ground technology in an understanding of what users want. Then test it practically and iteratively for value, Trunzo added. This is the IBM Cloud Garage’s formula for cooking up a minimum viable product, or MVP, in weeks or months instead of years.

Trunzo spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the IBM Think event in San Francisco. They discussed how Cloud Garage speeds clients to MVPs. (* Disclosure below.)

Quick gains and the innovation long game

An MVP could be whatever desired business outcome clients dream up. Cloud Garage also works with clients on a variety of goals that may not be an MVP.

“Sometimes it’s something like understanding whether certain security protocols internally can be met with moving a workload in a certain way,” Trunzo said. “Sometimes it’s actually about user conversion. So it could be a marketing goal.” 

Once they identify an “actionable MVP,” they need to test its viability through iterative experiments. Breaking it into pieces keeps it manageable and allows for close monitoring of results. 

With the business goal defined, the necessary technology enters the picture as a sort of “subplot,” Trunzo explained. Rapid testing and iteration can lead to the creation of an MVP in three months, and sometimes quicker.

“Sometimes the MVP is something that is ready to roll into production. Sometimes the MVP is something that leads to a learning that produces a second MVP,” she said. Which isn’t a failure. A culture of constant learning and innovating is ultimately what digital businesses need, she added. 

“I’m not sure you ever hit a stage where you say, ‘Aha! I’ve done it.’ But more that you can identify milestones where you can learn and apply that learning to keep evolving,” Trunzo concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the IBM Think event. (* Disclosure: IBM Corp. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither IBM nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE