This presentation was provided by Eric Swenson of Swensonia Consulting, during Session Two of the NISO event "Agile Product and Project Management for Information Products and Services," held on May 21, 2020.

1. Defining a
Minimum
Viable
Product
NISO Training Series:
Agile Product and Project
Management for Information
Products and Services
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Eric Swenson
Swensonia Consulting | New York
e.Swenson@Swensonia.com | @eswensonia
https://www.linkedin.com/in/swensonia/

2. Polls Getting acquainted

3. Agenda
Objective
Recap
MVP Demystified
Build, Measure, Learn
Execution and analysis
Demystify the MVP
Better understanding of how to adapt lean & MVP
principles to traditional environments
Inspire experimentation
Establish common lexicon

4. Recap:
Last week:
Agile Teams
Impact + Adapt
Kaizen = Improvement
Continuous Improvement
Adaptive teams
Interdisciplinary team
Leading vs. managing
Agile + Lean = true love

5. I. MVP
Demystified
• Liquid Lexicon and the Semantic Traps
• What an MVP is
• What an MVP is

6. My first MVP

7. Liquid Lexicon
and the
Semantic
Traps
Agile ≠ Lean à Agile || Lean
They’re complementary.
Customer || User || Buyer || Patron
The entity you serve whose attention, time,
approval or money dictates the success of
your endeavor.
Product || Service || Your Business
A service is your product; your product might
be a service.…
product-market Fit
experiment
pivot
OKR
KPI
iterate
LOAF
UVP
lean
prototype
test
hypothesis
startup?
product management

8. Minimum
Viable
Product
The smallest amount of work you can do to test
your idea on real customers.*
The MVP helps you find your sustainable business
model through validated learning.
The MVP speeds up your learning process and saves
you money (in the long run).
MVP’s allow you to act boldly while minimizing risk!
Speed: Learn from your customers using the
product as soon as possible.
Learn. Adapt. (Or die trying.)
* AKA patrons, buyers, users….

9. “Some believe it’s anything you
can learn from…
[vs.]
Others believe it’s a scaled down
product that works just enough to
get customers to pay.”*
Key: Validated learning and
rapid experimentation are
fundamental common
denominators.
* Jaime Levy, author of UX Strategy, in conversation. See: www.jaimelevy.com
“The term has become bastardized. MVP has two definitions these days…”

10. MVP Examples
Scholcomm: figshare
ProSumer: Dropbox
Consumer: Zappos

11. Dropbox
“Concierge” MVP
No prototype, no functionality. A
representation of the style and value
of the service without investing in
technology or backend resources.
The 2008 Dropbox MVP fake-screencast simulation video by
CEO Drew Houston released helped launch the “explainer
video” revolution. It also generated massive conversion -- over
75,000 signups for a product that had not yet been built.
See the original simulation MVP here: https://youtu.be/7QmCUDHpNzE
Note: when researching, it is easy to mistakenly find the 2009 explainer; much unneeded energy is spent debating about this due confusion on this topic.

12. figshare
Piecemeal MVP
“An MVP model in which the
product is made by using existing
tools and solutions instead of
building a custom solution.”
figshare’s 2011 alpha & beta was a mashup of a
Wordpress front end and a Mediawiki backend
(the Wikipedia software)*
• Mark Hahnel Phill Jones
• The Difference Between a MVP and a Prototype. Andrej Gajdos. https://andrejgajdos.com/the-difference-between-an-minimum-viable-product-mvp-and-a-prototype/

13. Zappos
“Wizard” MVP
“In a Wizard of Oz test, customers
believe they are interacting with
the actual product, but behind
the scenes human beings are
doing the work.”
– Ries *
The Zappos MVP was an honorable ruse.
Similar to the Mechanical Turk (a fake chess-playing machine circa late
18th century), the site was built with minimal coding; there was no true
back-end fulfillment infrastructure.
Benefit: multiple hypotheses tested simultaneously + direct customer
contact
* The Lean Startup. Ries. P. 104
Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk

14. Context
Matters:
Startup
vs.
Corporate
Startup or Innovation Hub: The purpose of a startup (or
innovation hub) is to find a sustainable business model.
No single North Star. Instead, set goals that help you on
each pivot.
(MVPs can help!)
Established Company: The purpose of the established
company is to ensure the ongoing relevance of its
business model and to adapt continuously in order to
ensure continuous growth and revenue.
North Star-driven; usually more fixed long-term
targets…but you can help change that!
(MVPs can help!)
*The books portrayed above are my top-pick desert island reads relative to each relevant environment.

15. An MVP is… …hard to do
…a test of a hypothesis
…an experiment
…a learning exercise
…a creative exercise
…a tool to establish product market fit
It could include:
A minimum feature set (“Piecemeal”)
Working code
A fake (“Wizard”)
A video (”Concierge”)
Whatever is necessary to fit the criteria:
minimum and viable

16. An MVP is
not…
…easy to do
…a “special” or “gold plating”
…something produced to satisfy an executive
mandate to release a “minimum” set of features by
a specific date, with a specific set of arbitrary KPIs,
OKRs, etc. derived by the Strategy Group, the
Analytics Department, the creative director or
anyone who isn’t in direct contact with customers
(and that had better be YOU)
…a “special”
…graded as simply a success or failure
…an excuse to deliver crap

17. End Part 1 Q&A

18. Recap
MVP is an experiment performed to collect the
maximum amount of validated learning from customers
with minimal effort
It’s all about getting your experiment into the hands (or
bodies) of customers
Both startups and existing companies/organization need
the same thing: ongoing, consistent, rapid validated
learning.
“It is not necessarily the smallest product imaginable,
though; it is the fastest way to start learning how to
build a sustainable business with the minimum amount
of effort.” - Ries
* How DropBox Started As A Minimal Viable Product. Ries. TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/dropbox-minimal-viable-product/

19. II. Build,
Measure,
Learn
Research
Hypothesis
Design

20. If you don’t understand your
customer, you don’t
understand your business.
If you don’t understand your
business, you’re in deep sh**.
Anonymous

21. Tip: Use a Canvas
https://leanstack.com/
• Problem
• Solution
• Key Metrics
• Unique Value Prop
• Unfair Advantage
• Channels
• Customer Segments
• Cost Structure
• Revenue Streams
• Key partners
• Key activities
• Key resources
• Value Proposition
• Customer Relationship
• Channels
• Customer Segments
• Cost Structure
• Revenue/funding Streams

22. Tip: Business Model
Canvas
• Key partners
• Key activities
• Key resources
• Value Proposition
• Customer Relationship
• Channels
• Customer Segments
• Cost Structure
• Revenue/funding Streams*

23. • Customer Segments
• Problem
• Revenue Streams
• Solution
• Unique Value Proposition
• Channels
• Key Metrics
• Cost Structure
https://leanstack.com/
Tip: The Lean Canvas

24. Identify the
customer and
define the
problem
Do you know who your customer is?
What are their pain points?
What could you do to relieve that pain?
Your MVP should help you on your way to
product/market fit
Engage your team.
“When a great team meets a lousy
market, market wins. When a lousy
team meets a great market, market
wins. When a great team meets a
great market, something special
happens.”
Andy Rachleff
Venture Capitalist
Rachleff quote from Tren Griffin’s blog 25iq. https://25iq.com/2017/02/17/a-dozen-lessons-about-productmarket-fit/

25. Screenshot: Strategyzer Value Proposition Canvas: strategyzer.com
Illustrations: Value Proposition Design
Tip: Use the Value Proposition
Canvas to identify & define
customer pain points and pain
relievers (your MVP)
Can’t parse OA
from payOA facet
LIS, A&I or
CRIS
Researcher
OA facet w/ full-text
Time saved!

26. A hypothesis is a leap of faith (LOAF) but it is
investigated, tested and evaluated using facts
and the scientific method.
By prioritizing your hypotheses, you will see
which ones will return the most value when
tested.
Chart from: MVP Analysis Case Study and Workbook. Ries. See: www.thestartupway.com

27. MVP
Process
• Research
• Hypothesis
• Plan
• Design
• Execute
• Feedback
• Iterate
Build
Measure
Learn

28. 1) Build a simple version of your product idea
1) Prototype
2) Smoke Test
2) Put it in front of real customers (the market)
1) Collect feedback
2) Measure interest
3) Learn
1) 5 whys
2) Iterate, pivot – or kill
Build
MeasureLearn
Build, measure, learn, build, measure, learn, build, measure, learn…quickly.
Execution: Build, Measure, Learn*
* Also referred to as “Test, experiment and learn”

29. Learn
MeasureBuild
Planning works in reverse:
You must figure out what you need to
learn before you can figure out what to
measure and what you need to build to
satisfy those needs.
Planning: Learn, Measure, Build

30. The
Kniberg
Meme
https://blog.crisp.se/2016/01/25/henrikkniberg/making-sense-of-mvp?utm_content=buffer45652&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer

31. End Part 2 Q&A

32. Recap:
Build, measure, learn
Planning and documentation are essential in
agile and lean product development
Context is everything:
Startups: MVPs inform business models
Existing products/companies/services: MVPs
inform growth, evolution

33. III.
Execution
and
Analysis
Understand your customer
Question everything

34. Understand
your
customer
Push
Pull
Inertia
Friction
Global Pandemic leads to
lower enrollment, budget
cuts, etc.
Argue and negotiate
Expectation of status quo; assumed enrollment
dips would be manageable because of statistical
forecasts performed by the Strategy group.
Fear of layoffs, job losses and crashing enrollment.
Couldn’t find their institution’s authors, papers.
Couldn’t find links to OA text
Save the business.
Bring customers joy and
comfort
Extended payment plan; great APR
Developed preprint validation
engine and agreed to reduce
fees 25%
No. Board of Directors refused
and expects customer to sell
blood to pay for old product
Negotiate with Sci-Hub.
Meeting with Alexandra
Elbakyan on Zoom tomorrow.
Source: www.leanstack.com

35. Vet your
assumptions
• EXAMPLE ASSUMPTIONS FOR AN A&I
PRODUCT:
• Researchers care about whether or not
an article is labeled open access when
that is the case
• Researchers will return to the site more
frequently if they think the product is
sympathetic to OA content and provides
links to freely available OA content
• Researchers want access to data sets
associated with article level content
• This will be easy and cheap to do

36. Design and
document the
experiment
(your MVP)
• What is your hypothesis?
• What will you learn from testing it?
• How will you measure the outcome?
• What is the minimum feature/product
you can build in order to test and learn?

37. Design an Experiment:
Document assumptions + Articulate future condition
Chart from: MVP Analysis Case Study and Workbook. Ries. See: www.thestartupway.com

38. Learn, Report, Analyze, Decide
Chart from: MVP Analysis Case Study and Workbook. Ries. See: www.thestartupway.com Experiment Report Source: www.leanstack.com

39. Iterate?
Pivot? Kill?
Learn
Report
Analyze
Decide

40. Continuous Learning is the Key

41. Establish a network. Get a mentor.
Be a mentor.

42. End Part 3
Thank you.
Q&A

43. Thank
you!
Eric Swenson
Swensonia Consulting | New York
e.Swenson@Swensonia.com | @eswensonia
https://www.linkedin.com/in/swensonia/