Creating an MVP

The team and my role

In defining and building Red Book Keep, as the Product Manager I worked with the GM of our Manager's Red Book business to understand and validate business value, a designer, and engineer.

Problem to solve and key personas

CHOOSING THE TECH

Progressive Web App (PWA): an ideal candidate for MVP

single developer creating a single code base that can be used across Android & iOS platforms

In a mobile wrapper for download on app stores, tech can produce app-like features - key for camera use

Faster to build with fewer resources

Familiar app-like feel

Measuring technical effort & business value

How we used the Fibonacci sequence to score technical effort and business value in order to determine MVP feature set.

Familiar with the Fibonacci sequence for estimating development effort, we wanted a way to also quantify business value so we could determine which features would be best to include in our MVP.

However, the Fibonacci sequence gives more nuance on the "low" side of things, and with big jump on the "high" side of things we didn't want every business value ranking to be a 21.

So we took the pattern [1, 1 + 1, 1 + 2, 1 + 4, 1 + 7, 1 + 12, 1 + 20] and essentially reversed it - we started at 21 and subtracted that same pattern: [21, 21 -1, 21 -2, 21 - 4, 21 - 7, 21 - 12, 21 -20] and ended up with a sequence like this:

Overlaying these sequences we were able to ID feature candidates with high business value and low effort as great candidates, features with low business value and high effort as poor candidates for MVP and those in the middle as great discussion points for if we could increase the value or decrease the effort to push it in towards a better candidate, or choose to drop it.

Make pages of the Red Book accessible beyond the back office

Streamline communication into the Red Book Keep app

A part of the MVP was a .csv upload of the 'skeleton' of the brand's Manager's Red Book. This allowed for dates, titles, and even page numbers to categorize content.

Pages were considered 'complete' when a photo was snapped of the entry. A percent complete could then be shown on the homescreen.

Commenting was added to help managers and above store managers communicate within the app. This kept clarifying questions and comments out of text messages and into an auditable source.

Capturing feedback about the books was also raised as a need for a communication trail. This would allow home office workers to have a direct line of feedback on the content from front-line managers.

Key features

Red Book Keep Demo

In March 2017, started work on Red Book Keep's MVP with a designer, developer, and GM of the Manager's Red Book. This is a quick demo video those and later features, including multi-store views.

Results

• Launched within 5 months

• In Red Book Keep's first GA quarter, it converted 25% of sales-qualified leads

• Customers reported a higher quality of tracking, leading to operational efficiencies and higher audit scores

• Kicked off my Product Management career. After launch, continued product management & program management duties in parallel until February 2018 when I transitioned fully over to Product Management and added more products to my portfolio