The Wizard Of Oz Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Minimum Viable Products come in all shapes and sizes. Today we'll throw back the curtain (geddit?) on the Wizard of Oz MVP.

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Minimum Viable Products come in all shapes and sizes. Today we'll throw back the curtain (geddit?) on the Wizard of Oz MVP.

Key take-aways:
Zappos is the best example I know of a Wizard of Oz MVP
Zappos began in 1999
They needed to know if people would by shoes online
They visited shoe shops and photographed shoes. These photos went on to the website
If someone ordered a pair of shoes, they would return to the shop, buy the shoes, and ship them to the customer
Note that from the customer's point of view, everything appears to be fully functional.
Other example of the Wizard of Oz MVP include Aardvark and Cardmunch



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36. The Wizard Of Oz Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
#DevelopmentThatPays

Minimum Viable Products come in a range of shapes and sizes. Today we going to look at the one with the coolest name. Join me as we throw back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz MVP. 1999 --- Its 1999. You're thinking about selling shoes online. You know that people buy shoes. What you don't know is whether people will buy shoes online. (It's never been tried before.) You devise a cunning plan. You go into town. You go into shoe shops. And you ... err... take photographs of shoes! Later, you upload the photographs to a website. What happens when someone buys a pair of shoes No problem. You pop back into town. You pop back into the shoe shop. And you buy the shoes! You then ship them off to the customer. Did you spot it ---- This, as you might have spotted, it the story of Zappos. It's the best example I know of a Wizard of Oz MVP. So called, because from the customer's point of view, everything appears to be in place. The customer has no idea that behind the scenes it's a little bit... manual. in Zappos case, all of the going to town, going into shops, taking photos... .... going back to town, going back into shops, buying shoes... is hidden behind the curtain. From the customer's point of view, the Zappos business looked and operated like a fully functional eCommerce operation. Different world ---- I love the Zappos story, with one teeny weeny reservation. It's not directly applicable to my world. For one thing, it's a long time since I dealt with a physical product. Perhaps you thought the same thing Let's look a couple of other examples. In each case, see if you can guess what's behind the curtain. Aardvark --- Aardvark was about connecting people with questions to people with expertise. Behind the curtain Perhaps a neural network of stunning complexity No. A bunch of Interns! Cardmunch ----- Cardmunch is an app that scans business cards and converts them into contacts. It somehow managed to transcribe blurry photos of business cards better than any other Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system at the time. A technological breakthrough Nope. Behind the curtain Amazon’s Mechanical Turk! Amazon’s Mechanical Turk has a curtain of its own. What's behind the green curtain People! Minumum vs. Viable ---- One final thought before we click our heels together and head back to Kansas: David J Bland says the hard part about MVPs is that ... you decide what’s Minimum... ... the customer determines if it is Viable. A Wizard of Oz MVP all but guarantees a high 'viability' rating: the 'minimal' (usually manual) process is hidden behind the curtain. The customer, has no idea that corners have been cut.
   • The Wizard Of Oz Minimum Viable Product (MVP)  
   • The Lean Approach: Minimum Viable Products