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#productowner — Public Fediverse posts

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  1. Mark Levison @mlevison ·

    In a Wizard of Oz MVP, you present what looks to the end user like a fully functional product. Behind the scenes, it's just people doing the work.

    The most famous example is Zappos (originally Shoesite). Like any good Lean startup, they needed to test their riskiest assumption: would anyone buy shoes online? You can't test fit, feel, or quality through a screen. Rather than spend millions building a fulfillment center, founder Tony Hsieh put up a website that sold shoes, then fulfilled orders manually by buying them at local stores.

    Airbnb did something similar: the founders visited early hosts' homes, took professional photos, and listed them on the site themselves. When a guest booked, the founders handled the details in the background. Both were testing the same riskiest assumption: is it safe to buy or rent over the internet?

    Build a realistic front end, leave out the back end, and iterate quickly as you see how people actually use it. To the end user, it has to look real. Measure whatever you'd normally measure in a live product: does the user buy, rent, or take the key action?

    Pros: cheap, cheerful. Cons: consistency is hard to maintain doing repetitive tasks manually, and it doesn't scale. If demand overwhelms you early, you may need to shut the door temporarily and build the real thing. Remember, you built throw-away code. Don't build on top of it.

    Wizard of Oz is one of my favourite MVP techniques.

    agilepainrelief.com/glossary/w

    #agile #productowner