In a startup context

George Krasadakis
Feb 2019

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

The structure of this session

1 Background
The MVP and why it is critical for a startup

2 From an idea to an MVP

Steps to follow to properly define your MVP

3 Rapid prototyping
Techniques to help you experiment and capture feedback
From a problem to an MVP

A learning process via prototyping, experimentation & feedback loops

Problem Idea(s) Concept(s) Prototype(s) MVP

Problem statement Ideas – one pagers Solutions – one pagers Realistic UX Product Backlog
Users involved State-of-the-art Wireframes Technical description Product Roadmap
Stakeholders Competition Users and personas Exit criteria Tech architecture
Market scan Product Architecture Feedback summary Market strategy
Possible competitors Technology Architecture Feedback mechanisms
Failed attempts Feasibility & cost estimates Experiments
The product management function

Outflow: New
releases, new
features

Product Management Function

Targets Insights

KPIs Priorities …
Product
Backlog Ideas Prototype MVP MVP +1 MVP +n
Problem Ideas Concepts
Planning User Feedback

Inflow: User
feedback,
telemetry
 Product Management is critical for startups
1
75 percent of venture-backed startups fail
1. Startups have extremely limited resources
2. They are ‘driven by passion’
3. They have little or no structure

The product risk: To build something nobody wants or poorly build a

product with great demand

1 FastCompany, "Why Most Venture Backed Companies Fail," Harvard Business School -Shikhar Ghosh.
 Why do
Startups fail?

It’s the product!

Source: https://www.cbinsights.com/research/startup-failure-reasons-top/
Why do Startups fail?
My own list of failure reasons!
1. Over-engineered products
Even if the MVP is properly defined, the engineering work become far more sophisticated than needed;
this leads to waste of energy and resources – with huge opportunity cost. Engineering-heavy teams need
to be aware of this risk and follow a lean, agile approach.

2. Ignore or mis-interpret user feedback

Startups may ignore the signals from their userbase; or confirmation bias may responsible for reading only
the ‘compatible’ patterns; this is where predefined Success criteria – specific metrics and KPIs could make a
difference.

3. MVP – they just don’t get it

They don’t get the notion of the MVP and, as a result, they fail to focus and set the right priorities
 Why do Startups fail?

It’s the product!

Make sure you have the right product
management skills in your team!
1 The MVP
1. The definition of the MVP
2. Popular misconceptions regarding the MVP
3. Why a good MVP is critical for startups
4. Characteristics of a good MVP
5. Signs of a poor MVP
But what is an MVP anyway?

“In product development, the minimum viable

product (MVP) is a product with just enough
features to satisfy early customers, and to
provide feedback for future development” —
Minimum_viable_product
Ries, Eric (August 3, 2009)
But what is an MVP anyway?

“In product development, the minimum viable

product (MVP) is a product with just enough
features to satisfy early customers, and to
provide feedback for future development” —
Minimum_viable_product
Ries, Eric (August 3, 2009)
But what is an MVP anyway?

“In product development, the minimum viable

product (MVP) is a product with just enough
features to satisfy early customers, and to
provide feedback for future development” —
Minimum_viable_product
Ries, Eric (August 3, 2009)
But what is an MVP anyway?

“In product development, the minimum viable

product (MVP) is a product with just enough
features to satisfy early customers, and to
provide feedback for future development” —
Minimum_viable_product
Ries, Eric (August 3, 2009)
Frequent misconceptions about MVP

People confuse the MVP with the Prototype

People confuse the MVP with the Proof of Concept
People think of the MVP as ‘just something to start with’
People think of the MVP as a ‘quick and dirty’ product
With a proper MVP you will be able to:

Think Big, but start small, iterate fast

Build your product with less

Test your product with real users, faster

Go to market faster

Pivot, earlier
A good MVP …

Focuses on the user

Reflects tested user needs

Solves the core problem

Has great feedback loops

A bad MVP …

Is over-complicated or oversimplified

Is over-engineered or not engineered :)

Is not aligned with user needs

Does not enable user feedback loops

The Problem Statement

Make sure you don’t solve the wrong problem ☺

Describe the problem you are solving with a solid problem

statement: ”… a concise description of an issue to be
addressed or a condition to be improved upon. It identifies the
gap between the current (problem) state and desired (goal)
state of a process or product

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_statement
Validate the Problem

Is it really a problem worth solving?

1. Who are the key-users – the ones impacted by this problem?

2. What are the pain-points you are trying to eliminate?
3. Did you validate your problem statement with your team, your
stakeholders and selected users – does it reflect the real problem?
Articulate your solution

Describe in a single page:

1. The context – the situation

2. How your product solves the problem?
3. Start describing your personas
4. How you address the major pain points for your users?
5. Think big at this stage – describe your product vision
6. State your assumptions
Identify your users

Who are you solving for?

1. List all different classes of users –who will benefit from your solution?
2. Document your users, their needs, their pain points
3. Describe the ideal scenarios/ experience for each class of users
4. Collect metadata for your users – anything that could be correlated
with needs, expectations, point of view
5. Define named personas
Understand your users

Who the users are vs what the users need

1. Construct user profiles and personas; use empathy

2. Interview users – capture signals, pain points, expectations
3. Analyse available studies and metadata – public domain
4. Validate your problem with selected users
5. Validate your solution with selected users
Define your product

Think as a user: define your product with user stories

1. Describe product features <as a user>

2. Apply empathy – use what you know for your users/ personas and
try to express their needs and the desired user experience
3. Think Big – write Epic user stories
4. Think Small – its OK to write user stories at the lowest level of detail
5. Don’t bother about feasibility and priorities at this stage
Define your MVP

Post-process your user stories; rank them; get your MVP

1. Your product backlog should have all the user stories/ product
features you can think of
2. Process each user story to estimate [a] its expected value for the
user/ its importance in solving the problem and [b] its feasibility
3. For each story, you can combine these estimates into a single score
4. When all your stories have a score, rank them to reflect the priority
Define Success

You need a solid definition of success … to get there

1. At this point you have a prioritized product backlog; you need to

describe what ‘success will look like’
2. Identify the key metrics which will be used to measure success
3. Combine the metrics to the right KPIs
4. Prepare your data capturing mechanisms to support your metrics
5. Design a single ‘product performance dashboard’ as your source of truth
You are here How can you get there… faster?

Product Management Function

Targets Insights

KPIs Priorities …
Product
Backlog Ideas Prototype MVP MVP +1 MVP +n
Problem Ideas Concepts
Planning User Feedback
The Prototype Defined

Types of prototypes

1. Static prototypes – wireframes could serve the purpose in certain

cases
2. Clickable prototypes – approximating the experience but with no real
back-end and data services
3. Functional prototypes – but under numerous assumptions and
conventions; they can look realistic enough to support real user
interaction scenarios
Rapid prototyping techniques

Why build a prototype?

1. To get a realistic, functional instance of your product, really fast

2. Expose it to selected users and capture feedback
3. Test certain aspects of your product – the ones which have high
uncertainty and/ or implementation cost
4. Test certain technologies or experiences which might be new to end-
users – for example voice-driven interactions
Prototype ≠ MVP
MVP
1. Minimum but Production
ready and real product
2. Secure and Reliable
3. Accessible by all users
4. Integrated with real data
services
Prototype
1. Does not address
production requirements
2. Security/ Reliability not
concerns (static/ limited
vs security risks)
3. Accessible by limited
number of users only
4. Reusing existing
components and artificial
data and static content
How to speed up your prototyping

Build only what needs to be tested

1. Set the right focus – do not build ‘conventional features’

2. Find the features with higher uncertainty
3. Define an overall experience by combine all ‘static’ features and those
built for the prototype
How to speed up your prototyping

Use static data; reuse existing components

1. Don’t spend time building real data models and data stores;
2. Quickly design your key entities as static JSON files
3. Expose them via a simple APIs and you have a realistic integration
scenario
How to speed up your prototyping

Use existing, 3rd party services

1. Even for advanced AI scenarios there are ready to use commercial APIs to
quickly integrate and use
2. Even if you plan to build your own AI algorithm, you should be able to
approximate your results with existing commercial services
3. For all of your key scenarios – search what is already out there in terms of
APIs and use it!
How to speed up your prototyping

Use prototyping tools

1. There are great prototyping tools out there – especially for designing
UI/UX for web and mobile devices
2. There are great prototyping tools even for VR/AR experiences
3. Scan the market, select the right tools for you and use them for quick,
static or clickable prototypes
How to speed up your prototyping

Make assumptions, move fast!

1. When prototyping you have to deal with uncertainty, fast!

2. When you do not have all the answers, just make assumptions; just make
sure you will go back to validate them as you learn about the problem
and your users
3. Maintain simple, to-the-point documentation on the objectives,
assumptions and success criteria of the rapid prototyping effort; share it
with your team and your key stakeholders
How to speed up your prototyping

Rethink Quality

1. Quality is great – but you have to put it in the right context

2. You are not building a production system – even if the prototype is
hugely successful, chances are that you will through away the code
3. Focus on the user experience; back end processes could be hard-coded,
based on static, artificial data and the overall experience supported by
just a script
How to speed up your prototyping

Define exit criteria

1. A prototype is a kind of experiment/ test, to enable you to validate a

concept and learn
2. You need to define the key questions and the specific points your are
‘testing’.
3. Document the definition of success and exit criteria; and what you are
hoping to get out of the prototype, upfront.
How to speed up your prototyping

Build, capture feedback, iterate fast!

1. Build a basic UX – wireframes or real UI

2. Connect static data to make it realistic
3. Present it in the right context with a story – the right flow
4. Capture feedback
5. Iterated as needed; but fast!
How to speed up your prototyping

Use UI libraries & templates

1. There are great resources online – from web page templates, mobile
apps, images and videos – even public data sets which could make sense
in your scenario; use them!
2. If you plan to prototype frequently, build your own, internal library of
resources
3. If you have UI/UX experts in your team, consider setting up a set of
reusable UI elements and resources to speed up UI/UX development
How to speed up your prototyping

Use DevOps, Automation, Monitoring

1. Normally you need to host your prototype – so get ready in terms of

hosting scenarios and DevOps
2. Assuming a large group of users to expose your prototype to, you need
an effective way to capture feedback – via the prototype and/or with
online tools
3. You might need to setup monitoring processes to summarize user
engagement and interaction, during the prototyping phase
How to speed up your prototyping

Set the right expectations

1. Make sure that your key-stakeholders understand what a prototype is

and have the right expectations
2. Make sure your users get the full context when they are asked to interact
with the prototype
3. Make sure that you get honest, objective feedback from your users and
stakeholders; summarize and communicate appropriately the feedback
and insights
Talking about feedback …

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I would appreciate your feedback and thoughts!

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Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Buy8Ki-P0T8

Building data-driven and AI-powered products;
leading technology innovation programmes;

17+ US patents on Artificial Intelligence,

Analytics and IoT • 20 years of digital product
development – from concept to launch • 80+
innovative, data-driven projects • 10 multinational
corporations • 3 technology startups • Founder of
‘Datamine decision support systems’
g.krasadakis@gmail.com
https://medium.com/@gkrasadakis