To perform this analysis and obtain these answers, there are several techniques that can support you. You need to understand what the best means of learning is, what your restrictions are , what is most viable at the moment and what can generate quick results, always thinking about a good MVP .
Through landing pages : creating a simple page talking about this product/idea and analyzing how many people click on this page showing interest;
Pre-order – making your service or product available for sale without it being ready yet, making people aware of it and analyzing how many people are betting and investing in your idea;
Explanatory videos : we have the famous example of Dropbox , which, through a video explaining the product without even having it ready, gained many interested people;
Piecemeal MVP : basically a demonstration of your product usi portugal mobile phone number ng tools already available on the market, observing engagement to adapt your product;
SaaS and PaaS: you use some service or platform available on the market and include it in your MVP to save time – if it makes sense and in the future you will increase the number of customers, you evaluate the possibility of creating your own platform or service;
Wizard of Oz: This is a simple way to validate a product or service without necessarily having everything ready. We can mention some companies that have used this format, such as Zappos (the creator would go to local stores, take photos of the shoes and post them on the website, buying and shipping the product only when someone bought it online ) and Groupon (they had a very simple blog on WordPress, which generated PDF coupons that were manually sent to interested parties);
Interviews, demos, prototypes: these are the most common ones, where you create question forms, schedule interviews, design some simpler prototypes, schedule online or in-person meetings and take notes on these users.
Exposing the collected data
Once you have used some of these techniques and collected the necessary data, you need to be able to answer a few more questions that will strengthen conversations with stakeholders .
Can you somehow prove that your users and/or customers cannot live without your product?
Are you able to get orders that validate your sales roadmap ?
Does the proposed financial model make sense? Do you have a viable business?
Beware of vanity metrics that quickly fool us into believing that an idea will be a success right away. Numbers or statistics look great on paper, but if they don't mean anything important in practice, it's a very dangerous trap to fall into.
Numbers of downloads alone, for example, don't tell us anything. Many users may have downloaded the product and not even be using it. The same goes for the number of visitors, because without interaction we don't have much.
There are a few ways to collect these metrics so that they are relevant and useful to the business:
Pirate Metrics (AARRR)
Here you draw an AARRR funnel with the Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue stages.
With this framework , you will be able to answer some questions, such as:
How do users find you?
What is the first experience like for these users?
Do users re-engage with the product?
Do users tell other people, friends, family, about the product?
How do you make money with this product?
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Based on the NPS result , you will be able to get an idea of how these users feel about using the product. The idea is to conduct a survey that aims to understand the user's level of satisfaction, as well as the likelihood of them recommending the product to a friend.
Creating the business model
So far you have:
Complete mapping of interested parties;
What are your biggest needs with the business;
Your short, medium and long-term goals and objectives;
Data collected about market and users.
Now it is important to create the business model to move forward with the proposed idea.
At this point we can consider that the stakeholders have bought into the idea, but this will still be an ongoing validation process – both of the work that will be carried out and of continuing to believe that it is working.
The cool thing about building a Business Model Canvas to make the business model tangible is that you can have more and more visibility of how, what, for whom and why you are building this product idea.
Here are some important points to highlight to make the most of this powerful tool:
Always validate : each of the blocks has different ways of impacting the final product, having this view of the parts that complement the whole will bring many inputs on where you should pay more attention;
Capture value in the market: If you don't look at this part when collecting data, you'll probably miss some things that significantly affect your business model.
“It is important to understand business model patterns and adapt them to your market. – Business Model Navigator”
Ensure consistency (internally and externally): This documentation is alive and should be updated whenever new things are discovered along the way.
How to get buy-in with data to reduce technical debt
As a technical producer, I couldn’t leave out this subject – which is very important.
It's quite common for stakeholders and other executive leaders to distance themselves from the team when the topic starts to get more technical .
The focus is usually so much on the business – on delivering resources as quickly as possible to meet market requirements – that they do not adequately prioritize the quality of how it is being done. In other words, the issues are always revolving around achieving business goals with fast deliveries , with the highest possible productivity.
However, communication about the impact this also has on the business is crucial, especially when it comes to managing the reduction of technical debts that accumulate along the way (when the focus is not on quality).
Most engineers can refactor code (the process of changing software in a way that doesn't change its external behavior while still improving its internal structure) as they encounter inconsistencies. This is especially true for senior teams , who have these skills evident in their day-to-day work, and who make these changes without having to have an explicit conversation about it.
However, as the product (MVP) evolves, you will need more resources and people behind the scenes to ensure that everything continues to function effectively. Therefore, it is important to have clear and well-structured communication, providing relevant information that contributes to this dialogue.
My experience in this context
I recently went through a very similar situation on my team. We delivered the MVP of a product that was a success – believe it or not: in less than 5 months we had more than 1 million users registering and using the product.
The client could not have been happier, as we delivered a product that had market fit and solved the user's problem. We gained the client's deep trust , and they began asking us to develop new products.
What was the problem here?
Technical debt started to pile up and the priority was new products to be developed. The scenario that followed was almost something like: “It’s okay if we’re bleeding a little, let’s put a band-aid on it for now, let us know when it starts bleeding”.
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