Adoption & Evolution · master area

Minimum Viable Chain

Twenty minutes. Two practices. One cycle. Write a prediction with a check date. Run the check on that date. Everything else in the chain exists to make these two acts better — but the loop itself is what creates the learning.

Owners: PO, Tech Lead Phase it lives in: After We Build (Volume V) The corpus principle this enacts: The system does not get better because people try harder. It gets better because every cycle leaves behind a more accurate version of reality.

Where it lives in the chain

• After We Build · Adoption — how to start — the canon

How to do this

Just two steps. Run them for three cycles before adding anything.

1. Write a prediction before the next feature. "After this feature ships, Gal completes the grading cycle in under 15 minutes. We check it on 2026-06-15." That's it. No brief, no template, no ceremony. Twenty minutes.
2. Run the check on the date. Even if the result is "we forgot to wire the metric and learned that we should next time." The act of running the check is what builds the muscle.

What good practice looks like

A team that hasn't run a prediction-check loop tries it on their next cycle. The first check is messy — the data isn't quite right, the prediction was too vague, the date came faster than expected. That mess is the chain teaching the team how to predict and check. The third cycle's prediction is sharper. The fifth cycle's check is automatic. By the tenth cycle, the team experiences the loop as the way they think about work, not as a process.

The system does not fail because the practice is wrong. It fails because it is too heavy to start. Twenty minutes survives a sprint planning. Five volumes does not.

What it is not

The minimum viable chain is not a Feature Brief. Not an Initiative Brief. Not amigos. Not a retrospective. Not a model update. All of those make the prediction sharper and the check honest. But adopting them before the prediction-check loop is habitual is adopting ceremony without instinct.

Pull the next practice in when the team notices the gap it would fill — not when someone says it's time.

Related crafts

• Prediction Writing — what to write
• Practice Sequencing — what comes after the MVC is habitual