Boydlee Pollentine: Not So Risky Business - Creating Effective MVP's

N O T S O R I S K Y B U S I N E S S … C R E A T I N G E F F E C T I V E M V P ' S

BOYDLEE POLLENTINE (@BOYDLEEP )

W H O A M I ?

W H A T I S A N M V P ?

W A I T !I’m assuming you’ve gone through product discovery?

Everyone has an idea - someone has probably already had yours…

N A H , A L L G O O D .I D I D M Y R E S E A R C H ; - )

W H A T I S A N M V P ?

M I N I M U M V I A B L E P R O D U C T

The minimum set of features you need to implement to make a product realise it’s maximum potential.

(c) Adam Smith

M I N I M U M V I A B L E P R O D U C T

Or in developer terms:

Build it the best way you know how, without additional complication and without the overhead of acquiring new skills.

Tech stack you should be aiming for

Technology that is stable, cheap and

effective

Technology that meets tomorrow’s requirements

today

Stability + Productivity

3 GOLDEN RULES

1 ) T H E G O L D I L O C K S C R I T E R I A :

T O O L I T T L E F E A T U R E S W I L L H O L D Y O U B A C K , T O O M A N Y F E A T U R E S W I L L B O G Y O UD O W N .

L O O K F O R T H E S O L U T I O N T H A T P R O V I D E S J U S T T H E R I G H T S E T O F F E A T U R E S N O W A N D A L L O W S Y O U T O A D D N E W F E A T U R E S E A S I L Y A S Y O U N E E D T H E M .

3 GOLDEN RULES

2 ) C O R E V I T A L I T YH O W V I T A L A N D C E N T R A L I S T H I S P R O D U C T O R S E R V I C E T O T H E S T R A T E G I C G O A L S O F T H E A P P ? I F T H E A P P C A N S U R V I V E W I T H O U T I T , G E T R I D O F I T !

3 GOLDEN RULES

3 ) S I Z E M A T T E R S ! D O Y O U R E A L L Y W A N T T O R I S K Y O U R A P P B U I L D O N T H E T I N Y , S H I N Y N E W P R O D U C T T H A T 3 P E O P L E A R E U S I N G ? O N T H E O T H E R H A N D I F T H I S I S A N O P E N - S O U R C E F R A M E W O R K T H A T I S H E A V I L Y U S E D B Y F O R T U N E 5 0 C O M P A N I E S , E V E N I F T H E C O R E T E A M I S R E L A T I V E L Y S M A L L , H A V E N O F E A R .

W E W I L L T A L K A B O U T S O M E O F T H E S E T H I N G S I N D E P T H L A T E R O N …

G R E A T ! W E K N O W W H A T A N M V P I S !

I ’ M R E A D Y T O B U I L D !

W E L L , N O …

F O C U S O N T H E PROBLEMN O T T H EF EATUR E S

W H A T A R E Y O U RKPI ’S ?

W H A T BENEFIT D O E S Y O U R M V P B R I N G ?

H O W D O Y O U S H O W T H E C U S T O M E R MAXIMUM KPI

EFFECTIVENESS I N A M I N I M A L W A Y ?

U N D E R S T A N D I N G P R O B L E M S

W E W A N T T O B E A B L E T O S E N D S T U D E N T S A N E M A I L T O T H E I R M O B I L E P H O N E

W E W A N T T O B E A B L E T O S E N D S T U D E N T S A N E M A I L T O T H E I R M O B I L E P H O N E

W E N E E D T O B E A B L E T O C O N T A C T S T U D E N T S

W H E R E V E R T H E Y A R E , T O K E E P T H E M A C T I V E A N D

E N G A G E D .

ACTUAL PROBLEM

Research

Document.

Iterate.

C A N W E J U S T B U I L D S O M E T H I N G N O W ?

4 K E Y D E V E L O P M E N T A R E A S

• Back end services

• Applications (mobile, web or otherwise)

• Integrations

• Scaling

1 . B A C K E N D S E R V I C E S

A V O I D T H E P A T H O F R E L I A N C E

• Think using an MBaaS or third party “free” service will save you time and money? Think again.

• Choose technology that has stood the test of time.

• Choose a development stack that lets you start cheaply and expand at a rapid rate when required.

• Use third party software, but it must be either open-source or have excellent support infrastructure!

F U D D Y D U D D Y S O F T W A R E

Don’t be afraid to use old and uncool languages and software. PHP for example gets a bad rap from developers but it IS proven, you can host it for next to nothing and developers are plentiful!

Try saying the same about Go, Scala, Flex, Erlang, etc…

2 . A P P D E V E L O P M E N T

W O R R Y L E S S A B O U T T E C H N O L O G Y A N D M O R E A B O U T D E S I G N

FOC U SE D DES I GN

W H E N I T C O M E S T O T H E T E C H

DO YOU GO CROSS PLATFORM OR NATIVE?

WEB BASED OR NOT?

MAINTENANCE?

DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT?

N A T I V E A P P R O A C H

• More fine grained control

• Quicker turnaround for features and new API support

• Fewer “weird” issues…

W E B B A S E D A P P R O A C H

• Quick to build, quicker to market

• Finding or training developers is easier as long as they have some kind of web-dev experience.

• A lot better than it used to be…

C R O S S P L A T F O R M A P P R O A C H

• Best of both worlds,

• Can have unseen drawbacks and strange issues that native developers wouldn’t have to face.

• A lot of unknowns in this current marketplace…

3 . I N T E G R A T I O N S

C O N S I D E R B O T T L E N E C K S

• The bottlenecks in your app are often not the first place you’ll look.

• Push notification queues,

• Messaging/email queues,

• Build server / processes

D O N ’ T F O R G E T T H E B O R I N G B I T S

• Is the client intending on doing a lot of reporting? Then choose a relational database.

• How easy / expensive is it to ensure proper backups?

• Implementing analytics?

• What are the costs of bandwidth and data?

• SUPPORT.

• SECURITY.

• DOCUMENTATION.

T E M P T E D T O B U I L D A N D R U N I T A L L Y O U R S E L F ?

Don’t take the “I’ll just run it myself” approach, like many developers tend to do… e.g. your own push server for an app?

At least $20 a month plus bandwidth, plus support, plus maintenance…. so at least double, if not triple your initial estimates on everything.

4 . S C A L I N G

W E O F T E N F O R G E T A B O U T T H E H U M A N C O S T I N D E V E L O P I N G S O F T W A R E , E S P E C I A L L Y W H E N T H A T C O S T I S U S .

J U S T P U T I T O N A W S ?

• Who manages the network and hardware? You or the client?

• Is PaaS a better option than straight up Cloud?

• How fast do you intend to scale?

W H A T H A P P E N S I F Y O U ’ R E N O T A V A I L A B L E ?

• You’re on an 8 hour flight and your server goes down. Who is responsible?

• Any response is better than no response.

Research

Document.

Iterate.

have fun