Over the past several years, the lean startup movement has made the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) a key approach to incrementally discovering effective products and services. In this talk, Levent Gurses will discuss a 5 step MVP process for building great minimum viable products that's been used in real client engagements. His process has been developed working with more than 20 enterprise full-stack and mobile clients over the course of several years. Topics will include the challenges of creating the MVP vision, scoping the activity, what should an MVP cost in time and money, and what should you have when you are “done”. Not only sharing his tales of MVP development, he will provide insights in how he's developed methods to effectively drive vision and development execution.
What is an MVP?
A product that has the absolute minimal set of core features necessary to prove a hypothesis, generally linked to commercial success or market validation. The MVP seeks the highest return on investment versus risk.
The Rise of the Lean Startup Movement
The lean startup movement came about as a result of analysis of many startup successes and failures. Development timeframes have become shorter and customer engagement has increased, which is helping companies better product-market fit and a path to success.
Presentation Outline:
• The MVP Vision (What will I have at the end of the effort?)
• Brief history of the lean startup movement
• Scoping
• Budgeting for MVP
• Features: The MVP Way
• Essential vs. peripheral features
• Must have to prove a hypothesis vs. nice to have
• Assembling a team
• Hiring contractors or vendor firms to build the MVP
• Choosing a technology
• Fake it until you make it: How to create mock features for an MVP
Presenter
Levent Gurses - Developer, speaker, and entrepreneur, Levent is the founder www.movel.co, an enterprise mobility company based in Virginia. He’s a nationally-recognized leader in mobile technologies and is a frequent speaker at tech communities on mobile and full-stack development. Levent holds a BS in Computer Engineering and is a Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Product Owner.
4. Upcoming Events
● 9/24 - End of Summer Mixer - Loudoun Edition
● 9/26 - Government Solutions Hackathon with AT&T
● 10/14 - App Monetization Secrets
● 10/20 - From Idea to Revenue: 5 Steps to Validating Your Startup Product
● 10/21 - Happy Hour @ The Laughing Man Tavern
● 10/22 - October Pitch Fest @ Penn Social
● 10/27 - How to Pitch to Investors
● 11/17 - Hacking IoT - How Target was hacked through the HVAC data system
5. Agenda
● The Five Steps (Prequel)
● Featured Startups
● How to Be Successful (Sequel)
● Drinks at Rocket Bar
6. Frequently Asked Questions
● How much does/should it cost to build an MVP?
● How many features would you include in an MVP?
● How long should it take to build an MVP?
● What kind of skillset will I need?
● What should I do with an MVP?
● Should I seek investment before or after an MVP?
● When do I pivot?
● What should I measure? For how long?
● How many MVPs before the “real product”?
7. Contact Me
● Tweet me at @gursesl
● I will spend 30 minutes FREE trying to answer these or
other questions you may have
● No sales pitches, just my [biased] opinion
10. What Determines The Level of Fake?
The purpose of the MVP.
● Test a new idea/feature
● Understand product-market fit
● Present (demo) to investors
● Version 1 in a highly-regulated market
● Get a promotion at work
11. Who is the MVP of the MVP?
The Product Manager is the Most
Valuable Person in your Minimum
Viable Product team.
26. Process
● Assemble the smallest team possible
● Go with a super-lean, agile process
○ No stand-up meetings
○ No ceremonies
○ Measure product features, not story points
● Fake features
39. Sample Vision
PRODUCT is a new-generation social advertising platform designed to disrupt the marketing and advertising industry by offering
consumers the opportunity to become brand ambassadors and create social ties based on product and brand loyalty.
PRODUCT is a unique concept, composed of several powerful ingredients:
● Targeting based or user demographics
● Social network for advertising
● Incentive-based system for users
● Brand and product awareness and following
● Strong analytics and data gathering
● User generated brand promotion
PRODUCT offers interactive advertising and social network capabilities for video, display, and print ads. It serves as the hub for
advertisements and allows users to search for the advertised sale directly from the advertisers and agencies. Users can share ads
and earn rewards by performing actions such as purchasing products, sharing ads and creating their own brand promotion videos
to share with their network.
40. Sample Success Factors
PRODUCT will rely on the following key factors for a successful launch and continues growth:
● Ability to drive traffic to the website
○ Organic Search Engine Optimization
○ Paid ads
● Ability to convert the traffic into conversions
● Ability to attract agencies and advertisers
● Ability to encourage user engagement beyond the first several interactions
● Create an engaging and user-friendly interface
● Create a meaningful reward system for users who take action
● Generate a sustained press coverage and social media buzz
● Create a flexible technology platform which will allow for quick updates in the face of changing requirements
● Ability to create a mobile site or application from existing website assets
41. Sample Key Features
● Consumers get paid for participating in product advertisements
○ Post comments
○ Promoting to other users
○ Sharing with other users
○ Participating in focus groups or market research
● Ads have offers tied into them (Discounts, rewards, sales, etc.)
○ Discounts
○ Rewards
○ Sales
○ Points
○ E-Dollars
● Advertisers are notified when a competitor’s product is about to be purchased or is in a shopping cart and you can
participate to offer a better deal on your products.
42. Sample Assumptions
● The product is named PRODUCT and hosted at www.product.com
● PRODUCT will host videos on external storage lations such as Amazon S3
● MVP will be designed primarily for web users with modern browsers such as Google Chrome. It will run on most other recent web browsers supporting
HTML5 & CSS3
● During sign up, users will provide limited information such as username, email, and password
● User Profile page allows user to upload picture, select age, gender and limited set of interests
● Friends page includes social graph data such as friends list
● Video player will support multiple video formats
● Promote Partial Video Clips will not be part of the MVP
● HTML5 web pages will be designed for optimal desktop and mobile experience
● A set of wireframes will guide the implementation
● The HTML5 web pages will have the necessary look & feel according to the provided wireframes
● Agency dashboard page will be mocked up for the MVP
● Agency analytics page will be mocked up for the MVP
● Admin/Agency video post will be static. Website admins will add content directly into the database for the MVP phase
● User Account Incentives has limited functionality and add up static predefined rewards amount to the user
● Promote / Purchase / Watch add Incentives has limited functionality and add up static predefined rewards amount
● Purchase button sends user to the product page and add up some predefined reward amount
43. Sample Interaction Flow
● Users will land on the PRODUCT home page through
○ Organic search
○ Social network campaigns
○ Paid search campaigns
○ Offline marketing campaigns
● Users will create an account
● Users will interact with brands
○ Watch product videos
○ Comment on product videos
○ Purchase products
○ Like products
○ Promote products
● Users will interact with other users
○ Add as friend
○ Send a message
○ Comment on users’ profiles
● Admins will login through a separate interface (Mocked in the MVP)
● Advertisers will login through a separate interface (Mocked in the MVP)