2. •Managing Agile Consultant
@Lithespeed
•Experience: 9 years
industry
• Specialties: Agile, Team,
Program & executive level
Coaching and training
•Practitioner, consultant,
trainer, author, speaker
and community organizer
•Agile Coach @eGlobaltech
•Alumni, General Assembly
Product Management
•Experience: 5 years
Industry
•Specialties: Product
Management, Coaching &
Training
Beth Miller Jennifer Hinton
Is it MVP you’re looking for?
3. Today’s Outcomes
1. Design a Minimum Viable Product
2. Learn how to use a Lean-Startup tool called the
Javelin Board to identify customer segments,
assumptions, and experiments.
3. Understand what makes a good problem
statement, or hypothesis
6. Minimum Viable Product
“an MVP can be defined as the least amount of work
we can do to in/validate a hypothesis, or problem a
solution is designed to solve”
Small, earliest
point to gather
feedback
Must have utility
(e.g. not only the
login feature)
Must be cohesive
(e.g. not a
random collection
of features)
Minimum Viable Product
7. Why?
1. Reduce risk
2. Maximize success (learning)
3. Faster feedback
4. Reduced overhead
5. Measurable progress
“Success is not delivering a
feature; success is learning how
to solve the customer’s problem.”
-Mark Cook, Former VP of Kodak
8. Problem: Syncing files across systems
and computers.
Customer: People who have multiple
systems, or computers.
Riskiest assumption: If we provide an
extremely easy to use product, people
will try it.
Experiment: Video demonstrating ease
of use and sign up page. CEO, Co-Founder - Drew Houston
Dropbox
9. Problem: Syncing files across systems
and computers.
Customer: People who have multiple
systems, or computers.
Riskiest assumption: If we provide an
extremely easy to use product, people
will try it.
MVP - Experiment: Video
demonstrating ease of use and sign up
page.
CEO, Co-Founder - Drew Houston
Dropbox
10. MVP Key Questions
1. What is your riskiest assumption?
2. How would you test that riskiest assumption
with minimal work & maximum learning?
3. What would you measure?
11. How to design an MVP
See how customers respond.
Pivot or persevere?
Define a problem statement;
Turn it into an experiment.
12. Types of MVPs
• VIDEOS
• LANDING PAGE
• WIZARD OF OZ
• CONCIERGE
• MOCK-UPS/WIREFRAMES
13. Start with a problem statement!
Think about What, when, where, frequency &
gaps
For the entire month of October on the
Lithespeed webpage, no one signed up for
Certified Scrum Developer training classes
even though there are several classes
offered each month. The goal is to generate
monthly revenue by delivering training.
Courtesy of Jason Tanner
14. Design your MVP - fill in the blanks!
1. You’ve got your problem statement on
your board.
2. Review the problem statement.
3. Identify your customer segments,
riskiest assumption, solution (MVP), and
method/success criteria for your
problem statement.
Activity
15. Get Out of the BUilding!
Customer: Executives, Managers undergoing Agile Transformation
Problem Statement: For the entire month of October, on the Lithespeed
Company Webpage, no one signed up for Certified Scrum Developer classes.
Assumption(s): People are interested in becoming a Certified Scrum Developer
Solution (MVP): Set up a course registration landing page
Method/ Success Criteria:
• Survey & pitch to clients about the class during the month of November
• Expect at least 5 people to sign up for training by mid November
• Gain feedback on why there were no registrations
16. Get Out of the BUilding!
Result & Decision
• 1 person registered
• Feedback indicated that several people
signed up for the Certified Scrum Master
course; No clear value proposition for the
CSD
• More demand for CSM vs. CSD
• Invalid assumption, pivot…..
Iterate...Pivot..Learn...
17. What did we learn again?
● Designed an MVP(s)
● Turned your assumptions into a list
of possible experiments
● Learned important metrics for
understanding MVP success
● Collaborated with agilists who will
help you formulate your MVP
concept and experimentation
ideas
18. Contact Information
Beth Miller
Managing Agile Consultant, Lithespeed
beth.miller@lithespeed.com
Jennifer Hinton
Agile Coach, eGlobalTech
jennifer.hinton@eglobaltech.com
19. Reference(s)
The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
How to Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard
Startup Lessons Learned - MVP Guide
General Assembly - Product Management
Javelin Board - Lean Startup Machine
