Building products using MVP

As a Product Manager I care about solving real problems that real people experience.  I'm focused on learning what their problems are and determining how I can solve those problems in order to delight them.  The process I apply to uncover real problems utilises the MVP mindset and has validated learning at it's heart, not features.   

What is a MVP?

The name 'Minimum Viable Product' is a bit of a misnomer really.  To me, it's the least you can do to learn something specific that you're investigating.  That may be part of the finished product - or it may not.  A famous example is Dropbox who needed to confirm if people would want to use and pay for a file syncing application.  Their challenge was that its impossible to demonstrate the working software in a prototype form. The product required that they overcome significant technical hurdles; it also had an online service component that required high reliability and availability. To avoid the risk of waking up after years of development with a product nobody wanted, they did something  unexpectedly easy: they made a video.

Lots of people have already talked about MVPs - the best I've read recently is this.  As I hinted at above, this is a process of validated learning so for me MVP is the Minimum Viable Process to learn who your customer is, what their problem is and how you will address it.

A Garden Swing Set - MVP Style

We have a small swing in the back garden for our children but they are outgrowing it now and not getting as much enjoyment out of it.  The existing swing also has a significant flaw - it's not level (the garden is on a slope) which hampers swinging.  Our youngest gets scared when the swing starts going a bit sideways!  We know our children love swings and the such so we decided to get a bigger swing set.  Of course I applied the MVP process of validated learning to this endeavor!

A PMs approach

Before beginning any construction I tried to identify as many risks as I could up front.  To me the biggest risk was that any new swing would not be level - the same flaw hampering the existing swing.  This issue has the potential to render the entire project a failure.  Other questions that were considered included whether we just get a swing or something that includes other activities such as a slide.  We noted our children enjoyed and used other play equipment at parks and went for a garden swing set that included a slide.   The project has to deliver before a birthday, so there's a hard, unmovable release date.   My work is to de-risk the project and learn by doing, i.e. validated learning.

My first MVP - experiment to learn something was to see if I can ensure the construction is level.  Out came the spade to start digging to level the ground -  and quickly discovered that the ground is incredibly rocky.  In other words it was a harder, slower task than I anticipated. In fact I resorted to a pick ax to do the work.    I want a high quality outcome to the final product so I decided to follow the recommendations and anchor the whole structure in concrete.  Here's my first MVP.  Note how an MVP does not equal the first release.

An MVP may not be your first release

To get this far required some construction of the swing set.  More obstacles presented themselves here.  The instructions are a dodgy translation from another language.  The instructions aren't very 'IKEA like' - they aren't very clear or easy to follow.  They also direct you to build the entire thing and then anchor it into concrete.  I assembled the basic frame, constantly checking if the top cross-bar was level.

Yes the ground really was that rocky!

First Release

The MVP proved to be a success: The entire set was level and that massive risk has been dealt with.  It was then time to build on that learning and add actually begin building the swing set.   By now there are a couple of eager, anxious "customers" hassling me every day to see when can they start playing on it.  I reverted to following the instructions and the first 'feature' to be delivered was in fact the slide.  It turns out a slide also really, really needs the entire construction to be level too!   

This was the first release, which also completed most of the 'construction'.  There are still swings to be attached and have their length adjusted to the right height, plus a swing seat to be assembled, and the ground needs new turf laid but all of that can come later.   The first release has built on the MVP to deliver something of value and high quality (level and safe) to the users.   They can play on that while I iterate to deliver more 'features'.   Iterating to add more value each time proved to have an interesting effect in that each addition got the "customers" pretty excited and they loved playing with the latest addition.

By the time the 'release date' (birthday party came around, I had the slide and two swings delivered, plus new turf on the ground.  The final swing seat wasn't yet ready - but it turns out that was ok because there was more than enough fun to be had with what was available.   The finished product ended up like this.

Summary

Hopefully I've helped demonstrate what a MVP is - the least effort to get you some validated learning - and that it's a process, not a once-and-done thing.  An MVP may (or may not) be the foundation of your product, and may (or may not) be your first release.