Gaining agreement between Designers and Developers on the Scrum Team on the definition of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) for a Product is a critical success factor in design, implementation and deployment of the committed deliverable. This would allow for a more efficient and productive relationship between your envisioning side of the team and materialization side towards an accurate delivery of "What" the Product Owner has brought to the team.

1. MVP
The Minimum Viable Product in Scrum
by A. Kamran
Lean Agile Council
Best Practices in identifying and delivering MVPs (with UX integration)

2. Scrum: Readiness and Definition of Done
In this presentation we will take a look at:
❖What do we mean by “MVP”
❖Does it work for everyone?
❖Confusion: The natural companion of MVP
❖Repurposed (Chisel) MVP
❖The Emergence of UX
❖Collaborative Integration
❖Active Participation
© 2018 – 2019 A. Kamran
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3. A bit about the presenter: A. Kamran
• Certified Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Master (since 2006), Certified Product
Owner, Certified Scaled Agile Enterprise Transformation Lead, Certified
Scrum@Scale Practitioner, Certified Kanban Practitioner.
• 12+ years in Agile and Hybrid approaches (total 20+ years in Consulting and
Project Management).
• Consulted on, coached and/or directly managed technology solution delivery
teams for the Fortune Global 500 companies (incl. 5 major Canadian banks) as
well as Public Sector.
• Has launched 3 Successful Start Ups in Technology and Consulting Services; The most
recent launched in 2015 using the Lean Start Up model (now a growing high tech
boutique in Machine Learning technology solutions with 4 bases of operation in:
• Toronto,
• Palo Alto (Silicon Valley),
• Glasgow (Scotland, UK), and
• Hong Kong.
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© 2018 – 2019 A. Kamran

4. Flash Review of
Scrum
For detailed explanation of Agile and Scrum please refer to the previous training materials.
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© 2018-2019 A. Kamran

5. The most popular framework, based on Agile approach for managing
knowledge work, with an emphasis on software development.
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6. Scrum Roles
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Scrum Master
• Servant-Leader
• Safeguards the Team
• Facilitates day-to-day work
• Removed Impediments
• Hosts and Runs the Scrum Ceremonies
• Promotes Scrum Values and Best Practices
Product Owner
• Owner of Scope (Prod Backlog) and Release
• Presents the work items to the team
• Provides the minimum needed requirements
• Safeguards the scope during the Sprint
• Can Cancel Sprint if Scope becomes obsolete
Development Team
• Ux, Design, Development, Testing
• Self-Organizing & Cross-Functional
• Does the estimation and sizing
• Chooses Sprint’s Backlog items
• Decides on how to develop and deliver
• Delivers the Incremental Product
© 2018-2019 A. Kamran

7. What do we mean by
“MVP”?
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© 2018-2019 A. Kamran

8. MVP is the most trimmed down (Lean) version of
your Product that can still make a considerable
impact in the market with the main purpose of
collecting feedback from customers …
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9. So the key concept is
“learning”
what your customers want
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10. Need more elaboration?
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11. MVP (Minimum Viable Product)’s industry
standard definition reads as:
A lean delivery approach in which a new
product (increment) is built with “just enough”
features and abilities – which is presumed at the
time of initiation, to be of the highest positive
business impact – to be delivered to customers
for the intention of creating a market reaction,
gauging it and deciding on the next-best-action
(to continue, to re-align the work or to abandon
further activities on that path).
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© 2018-2019 A. Kamran
MVP Best Practises

12. Eric Ries, the writer of the book “The Lean Start Ups”
used the term for the first time in his book:
A Minimum Viable Product is that version of a new
product which allows a team to collect the maximum
amount of validated learning about customers with
the least effort.
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© 2018-2019 A. Kamran
MVP Best Practises

13. MVP should be functional enough (have enough features
and abilities) to get customers to interact with it (try it or
buy it) and create a way for them to provide feedback (or
allow you to monitor their interaction to generate feedback).
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© 2018-2019 A. Kamran

14. Naturally, your customers
should be able to see the
effect of their feedbacks
reflected in the upcoming
MVPs that will hit the
market!
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15. MVP should be appealing
enough to the early adopters
as a Product with good future
prospects to keep them
excited enough to follow your
next Product increment
The MVP needs to be able to
build up the future picture for
them!
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16. Early adopters are traditionally assumed to be the most collaborative customers in
providing feedback, but at the same time, their “rather forgiving” disposition
against your product may prevent them to openly share the full spectrum of their
opinion and this can create a mist of false-positivity around the Product increment!
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© 2018-2019 A. Kamran

17. • MVP enables the Team to become more
efficient by focusing on the least amount of
work needed for the highest impact.
• MVP also removes unnecessary trials in the
market by soliciting customers feedback on
what needs to be made, this saving money
and time.
• MVP lets the Team “Fail Fast”: To find the
issues as early in the process as possible.
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MVP Best Practises

18. Does this definition
work for everyone?
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19. As you may have guessed by now, the
“Standard definition” of MVP would
work very well for Lean Start ups!
It works when a newly established
company – or team - is trying to get as
much information from customers –
on what they need – as possible,
through getting them to respond to
product increments!
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MVP Best Practises

20. This newly established team may even
be a carve out from a large enterprise,
but as long as they are managed
separately and they have autonomy in
Production, they can still be treated as
Lean Start Ups.
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MVP Best Practises

21. So if you are in a large enterprise with an
already established reputation at stake, your
experimentation model should be done in a
much more sophisticated manner, with more
calculated guesses and more elaborate
structure of your MVPs that are going to
engage your early adopters and solicit their
feedback.
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MVP Best Practises

22. Confusion…
The natural companion of
MVP!
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23. The Common Trap!
MVP is a confusing subject! and this confusion usually leads to believing that it is actually
the Smallest Marketable Product (SMP) or Minimum Marketable Features (MMF) you
can deliver where the focus will be on earning (instead of learning!)
• This can lead to elimination of some of the minimum-yet-viable features of MVP that
would not be immediately visible to the product development team.
• Features such as market standards in UX design, visualization, accessibility, cultural
sensitivity, information security and ... may get missed in the process.
• This would also run the risk of Teams not following up on customer feedback or
suggestions, thus developing the next program increment in a vacuum.
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MVP Best Practises

24. The
Repurposed MVP
as a defensive measure!
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Chisel
MVP

25. Repurposed MVP (aka Chisel MVP)
In large organizations, with overloaded Teams, a
pattern forms where the Team is using MVP as a
negotiating tool with the Business to quantize the
scope for each release and through that pace the
delivery commitment to a cadence it can sustain!
They use MVP to trim down (Chisel) the large
requested work into increments they can deliver
in each release, while trying to ensure each
product increment is a set of the highest impact
scope items, that they could bundle together for
the next release.
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© 2018-2019 A. Kamran
MVP Best Practises

26. Chisel MVP
Is essentially more focused on commitment to deliver than trying
to maximize the information solicitation from customers.
In environments where there is less experimentation with the
market and the product is already decided and the team only
wants to fix forward any shortcomings (or market push-backs)
through some degree of mock-testing in a limited customer
engagement model, then Chisel MVP (or MVP with a new
meaning), is the way to go ahead.
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MVP Best Practises

27. The Emergence of UX
Product creation process expansion
from
Developing Features
to
Designing Experiences
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28. The Emergence of UX
As technology’s ability to provide functionality led to saturation of the
market by functions, the competition started shifting into “Who can provide
a better experience?”
Customers started to care and then gradually become difficult-to-please as
their expectation has now expanded from what the product can do, into
how satisfied I feel when I use the product!
This would be most vital for Lean Startups as they would get only one
chance to make a first impression.
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© 2018-2019 A. Kamran
MVP Best Practises

29. The Emergence of UX …
In large and well-established enterprises, the integration of UX in the
scope of the Product, has led to a more complex model for Product
creation.
As market’s appetite is now increasingly becoming more sophisticated in
User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX)— now early adopters
need that ‘WOW!’ element present even in their earliest product
increments.
But this needs to be done within constraints of time-to-market and pre-cast-
scope that may be requested by Lines of Business (LOBs) in large
enterprises as their dynamics are quite different from Lean Startups.
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MVP Best Practises

30. The Emergence of UX …
UX designers may argue that the MVP model:
• Would not provide them with unlimited freedom during their ideation /
design phase.
• Expects them to work with Technology team and that would force the
their design through into the molding of Technology, which may not
share the same passion in design as the designers.
• Enforce a “Just Enough” cap to their design work and trim it down to that
frame, thus limiting their efforts towards a complete experiences.
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MVP Best Practises

31. The Emergence of UX …
On the other hand, the Technology Team may argue that the MVP model:
• Stays loyal to the essence of Incremental Product delivery by entering
the market– with the “Just Enough” amount of design in UI and UX.
• Create earlier engagement with Customer by entering the market faster
and collecting feedback (as compared to going through multiple UX
design iterations to come up with a perfect design at the cost of staying
away from the market for too long)
• Is easier to plan for as the amount of work needed can be estimated
with higher certainty than UX.
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MVP Best Practises

32. Starting with the
Collaborative Integration
Model
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33. Collaboration through Integration
In order to create an effective working relationship between the Design and
Technology, we need to integrate their benefits and consider their concerns
within the dynamics of the organization.
The larger the environment, the stronger the time constraints and the more
comprehensive guidelines and implementation requirements (i.e. less
flexibility)
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MVP Best Practises

34. Collaboration through Integration would recommend the following steps:
1. Identifying the UX design paths that may exist for the variety of
scope items (Stories) that the Technology team (i.e. developers)
work on.
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MVP Best Practises

35. Collaboration through Integration would recommend the following steps:
2. Assess the complexity and duration requirement for each UX
effort per each path, and compare to current constraints. Find the
mutually agreed duration that would allow UX designer to provide
their Minimum Viable Design (MVD), while would allow Developers
to still meet their commitment on delivery dates.
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MVP Best Practises

36. Collaboration through Integration would recommend the following steps:
3. Ensure the Identified Paths (Design Categories) relevant to each
Story are planned ahead of the Sprint they will be developed (to
have UXD and Visualization requirement of the Story completed
prior to entering the Sprint Planning event).
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MVP Best Practises

37. Collaboration through Integration would recommend the following steps:
4. During the Story Sizing (estimation) exercise for each Story –
whether it is done during Refinement (aka Grooming) or Planning
ceremony – add consideration for the design verification (by
Design SMEs) as part of the Development and QA for each Story.
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MVP Best Practises

38. Executing with
Active Participation
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© 2018-2019 A. Kamran

39. Collaboration through Integration would recommend the following steps:
5. Ensure that Design SMEs (Designers) are participating in the
Development process through checking on the verifiability of the
developed interfaces as they are in progress – as per Developers
request – to ensure the coding is in alignment with the Design and
less re-work would be expected when performing QA on the Story.
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MVP Best Practises

40. Collaboration through Integration would recommend the following steps:
6. Ensure that Design SMEs (Designers) are participating in the
Product Increment Demo sessions to the Product Owners (and
System Demos to the extended stakeholders) and are ready to
provide answer to potential questions on the design.
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MVP Best Practises

41. Collaboration through Integration would recommend the following steps:
7. As feedback from Customers (and/or stakeholders) are captured
in the form of new Stories, we need to cycle back to the UX design
paths step and move forward from there.
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MVP Best Practises

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© 2018-2019 A. Kamran
Questions? Contact me!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/armankamran