Two Days Crafting Out MVPs Workshop

Today, large number of products/services fail, not because they cannot be built or delivered. But because the team building those products/services are disconnected from the people consuming them. This disconnect, leads to early assumptions about consumer’s behaviors and motives. To ones surprise, these stupid (read as: deadly and risky) assumptions can be the basis for many strategic decisions.

Traditionally, entrepreneurs believed that the only way to test their product/service hypothesis was to build the best-in-class product/service in that category, launch it, and then pray. And of course, spend big VP bucks on marketing campaigns.

Turns out they focused way too much on “Building the Product Right”, but ignored the “Are we Building the Right Product?” aspect. Surprise! Surprise! This can be a very time consuming and expensive process. Also its a huge opportunity cost to the company.

What product companies really need is a scientific framework for conducting many safe-fail experiments. In lean-startup lingo, let’s say you have an idea or a vision for a product or a service. You need to devise a series of possible strategies that could possibly be use to fulfill your vision. It is important to acknowledge that each strategy is based on a list of hypotheses that need to be validated using a series of cheap, safe-fail experiments (via MVPs) to obtain validated learning..

At the end of this training the team will be able to:

• Learn how to decide which assumptions you MUST absolutely test
• Understand why just marketing or user research metrics won’t help you make a better product/service

• Master the art of leveraging the Minimum Viable Product to create maximum validated learning for minimum cost.
• Understand how to represent a business model using Lean-Canvas
• Learn how to systematically decide when to Pivot to a new strategy.

Introduction to Lean Startup

Pivoting to Success: Couple of Case Studies

Customer Development Demystified

Safe-Fail Experimentation (SFE)

• Understanding SFE in action
• SFE Principles
• SFE Exercise

Simon Simonek’s Golden Circle and Vision-Strategy-Product Pyramid

Build-Measure-Learn (BML) Cycle

Designing and Validating MVP

• Introduction to the Problem, its context, potential users and their goals
• Form groups of 6 participants
• Craft out a Vision statement
• Define a strategy to achieve the vision
• Capture your business model using Lean Canvas
• State your value and growth hypothesis
• Explore different SFEs to validate each hypothesis

• Select one user group and design an experiment to validate your hypothesis
• Field trip
• Update your Lean Canvas based on your validated learning
• Share your validated learning with other groups
• Iterate (2 more field trips) to find real, paying customers
• Debrief

Retrospective

Special Note
This course contains multiple field-trips to run real experiments

Method of Instruction

We use a Socratic method for training that involves a 100% hands-on workshop with interactive dialogues, case studies, debates, demos, and instructional games.

Transfer %

Knowledge: 40%, Skill-Building: 60%

Target Audience

Leadership team interested in cultivating a experimentation driven decision making culture

Course Level

Advanced

Course Prerequisites

• Highly Recommended: Past experience planning and validating a product/service idea
• Highly Recommended: Deep understanding of the product/service development

To ensure a successful workshop, we require the following facilities:

• HDMI projector (1024×768 minimum) & Projector screen
• 1 White board & Dry erase markers
• Cluster seating with 5-6 people on each table

• 1 Flip chart with the stand and marker pens for each table
• Notepad and Pen for each participant
• Ample room for students in terms of room size and set up
• For Dev trainings: at least one powerful workstation between two programmers