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Michael:
All right, I’m Michael. He’s Abdul. If you watched our last video I named myself with dual accident.Don’t think he wants to be Michael.But anyways, okay,so today we’re gonna talk about how we divided our initial free months into an alpha MVP, a beta MVP, and what a duel is claiming, did you come up this with your so I didn’t know I thought somewhere I saw it somewhere and then m HP right? And that’s a it’s a most happiness,
minimum happy product, right? Sorry minimum happy product because we obviously have, you know, our alpha MVP minimum viable product that we’re trying to get out the door. which for us is June 1. Yep. Is our alpha, we’re going to have the ability to log in and log out probably Some password reset stuff, I would guess as well. And then being able to launch a WordPress website, yep. Inside the platform in that container most probably.
Abdul:
That’s like, I think that’s one thing that we were struggling with. And finally, like not nine guys have cracked that. So we have containers in that as well. But I think there is some some people I talked to, like everyday called have like an alpha and beta, right? Like who MVP is an MVP, right? But I said for product like curve, which is the scope of this product is quite large, right? It’s not a small product, what we are trying to build, if I know this is a product that even like today’s like may 16 2020. In May 16 2022, we’ll still be building the product, right? This product is huge. This product has so many features, and the industry is changing so fast. The crowd they might be into two years, they might be a completely different technology that we have for cloud instances. So we will be building on that right you’re building new features. So the idea was for profit Like this, just having like one MVP and forcing that doesn’t make sense, right? It have to kind of divide this whole process as well. And I think that’s the main idea where it’s kind of started, right? Because I remember that when we started talking about it, I said, it’s three months for an MVP. And I came to you okay, this is how we will do it. We, I think it was August, right. I think it was August when I said that we will have an MVP, and then the discussion that kind of went on for another week or so. So I think Michael can kind of expand on how that
Michael:
Yeah, just for me, I’ve I’ve I’ve tried to develop tools before and wasn’t very successful, but spent all even say 80 grand trying to build a tool recently, or not recently, in the last 10 years. And it never seem to have these phases that we’re talking about. Now. I understand. It’s never gonna end when you have a product and I think that’s kind of something as a SAS owner, you should understand the products always Going to have this development cost that you always need to continue to maintain, or at least maintain the product, if not add new features. It just constantly never got to the point where I was able to really use the platform that I needed. Right. So that was that was my big issue with it. And that’s why I’ve pushed a duel from the beginning. We like no, I’m not going to spend four months worth of money to not see anything here, right? That’s why I’m always like, hey, let me just get a login screen. Let’s just get this launched. And I think Finally we kind of came together and said, Hey, okay, cool. We’ll do it in some sort of phases, which is an MVP in phases almost right? So we’re taking kind of both the old lifecycle I think of kind of a product and the new the minimal viable product and kind of mash them together. And actually, they fall in on monthly cadences. Right. So we have the middle alpha MVP, the beta MVP in MHP. for June, July in August. That’s kind of what I’ve seen out of We haven’t even necessarily confirm those other dates. And you can switch them to that. That’s how I think we have
Abdul:
had it that we are in, right. I’ve because for us, I think I think we did a video yesterday where we talked about release cycles, that kind of US million cycles went out of the window, right? Like both of us are not fans of having big release cycles where you have like a big kind of a development phase because, okay, it might make sense for some industries, where they have regulations and stuff like that, where you need to have a very finished product even to get into it. But for SAS products, normally, you don’t, you shouldn’t have a very big release cycle kind of thing, where we start developing it for six months and then we deleted the idea was that he divided this into phases. So monthly phases to make it easier to track right? So may if alpha MVP phase, so right now we are into our alpha MVP phase, which ends on 31st of May. So first June is kind of a date where you said that we need to see the alpha MVP features that we have decided on as June starts June. Be a beta MVP phase. So in June, we will be developing our beta MVP on 30th of June, that phase. And so first of July, we should be able to see the beta features there in the product. And then July is our HP phase. So in July, we’ll be developing the hp version of the product. And by the end of July, we should be able to see all of those MHP features there. But a big difference in that is that these are not released. Second, this is not that we will develop the alpha MVP in May and release it on first of June, we will develop the beta MVP in June, we leave it on first of July. It’s not like that. It’s just to tell the team that this is the phase we are in. This is the phase if a feature gets done, it gets pushed. This is a very simple kind of a model that we have in the company. If it’s done, it’s shipped. Yeah, so two by two or three times a week we could be pushing new features, right?
Yeah, right. Right now it’s like a we did push our first kind of code match yesterday after the sprint but I think in Not an alpha but at least in beta MVP, it should be a couple of times a week. And in HP or just after HP it should be every day that’s a target that I have once we get into the score because by HP our core features should be very ironed out right they should be there. So all the features should be incremental. So they shouldn’t be taking days and days weeks and needs to build. So the idea is that we have we always like we will have a feature this is a feature we need to develop, have a back end attracted develop on it, they do it it gets QA it gets pushed, we it’s not waiting for the sprint right now our Sprint’s are five days to match because as we have monthly phases, so we have kind of chunk Earth standard sprint down from 10 days to five days to make to give that kind of an agility right now that for every flight, it’s what
Michael:
it’s interesting what’s happening though if you look at it at a 10,000 foot level, you’re having these Sprint’s that you’ve shrunk from five to 10 but we’re our releases are slower. To start right because we have to build this code we have to build the foundation but as we get this momentum the sprint summit will probably become larger yes but the actual releases will be much faster yeah right Yeah. Which is actually kind of cool as a as a product owner right as we’re seeing all these new things every week getting rolled out but right now it’s kind of slow but the Sprint’s are shorter, so it’s like kind of like expanding the Sprint’s but making the the releases come much, much quicker, which is cool.
Abdul:
Yep. So mostly the Sprint’s will offer image pay go to 10 days, but because we will be having continuous ci CD and integrated continuous integration and deployment. The idea is that we have automated testing. So we have those things. So hold would get pushed like if a developer is working on an improvement on the DNS module. If it gets done in the morning, it gets pushed in the evening kind of the thing right, it gets pushed. So because we will be having versioning in the product, like every user will be able to see which version of the product they’re in, even in the web, so they can make we can pull back very fast ideas. Okay, if something gets pushed, we have to pull back. And we can pull back very fast, right? if something gets something, then so it’s like, but that’s why we’re telling people that really coming on board that this is actively developed product. And that I think we would be in that for at least the next 12 months that we will be an actively developed developing product, right. The product will be developed very actively things will be I mean, the
Michael:
way you and I think, I think it’s going to be much longer than that, right? You and I are always coming up with
Abdul:
this, but but I think, each 12 months, the codebase will be so stabilized that any new features that come on, on top of it won’t disturb the kind of the, the overall kind of the layout, right? They’re like, okay, they’ll be add on features. So, but for 12 months, I think that it would be very actively developed. So there’ll be feature being pushed out every day, every few hours every other day, something would be changing, right? Something would be changing. So the idea is that that’s why we have some features which we call the note mode, kind of built in. We’re building that in that if you If you if you want to, if you want to have the fastest facial features go to the third mode, everything would be unlocked all new bleeding edge features that we are pushing when we push first to node mode, the node users and then we go out to the normal users. So you are having that kind of things from the start to make sure that we have this because otherwise, like if you tried with, like this other example of having all the messages, like I have worked with several companies who have been like, have big products for 5456 years. And when I tell, okay, where’s the language, and where’s the file where I can kind of, I’m a marketing, I want to change the language of all the error messages that are coming all the small strings, all the small options that are coming. And then Oh, the end the files, you have to go edit in which files we are trying to, even though we are getting some pushback from the developers, we are trying to get that sorted from day one because developers even though they are good at making products, they’re not that good at writing messages and errors like so we want to kind of break that. So having those like, even I remember when I told you that if It will allow us to go multilingual, you will like kind of like a multilingual because the thing is, these are things we have to think of right now. Because when you get to that time, and you don’t have it ready, that’s where you say why why don’t we have this ready kind of a thing that we should have done this earlier?
Michael:
When I think that’s where your experience comes in from, you know, I’ve never run a company that’s had 20,000 clients, right, or whatever number that other big client company you used to work for had, right? A large number of clients, right? And you’re thinking at that scale coming in? I’m thinking more from the bootstrap, bootstrap method, which I think is almost how we think, right? Like, if you look at how we laid out the plan, I was very much from the bootstrap side, Hey, how are we going to do this and you are from the top like, Hey, we know this will be in three months, like we’re fine. Like, no, we have to pay for this. Right and figure out how we’re going to get there. But it’s like, that’s how we’re merging it together to get to get where, where we need to go and that’s why you’re seeing things and A product that even developers aren’t seeing yet. And they’re like, oh, okay, that makes sense. And then they kind of get on board. And if not, we’ll continue to push them until they do. Right. But to your point, they’re not the best writers. But one thing I do want to talk about is the MHP. Phase. Yeah, because I think this is interesting, where, what in your mind defines them? He? So there’s obviously alpha and beta. They’re kind of the same. They’re kind of not I think, at MHP phase. That’s where something changes right for us. Yeah. So why don’t you talk a little bit what you’re seeing, and that base to change for? I would
Abdul:
say that I could make when I was thinking about this the first time when, okay, how should I divide it? So the first idea was to have the beta phase there for two months like that we keep developing the product, and we have it like a BDS to beta phase after two months, complete the beta phase after two months, but I don’t know. That is not the kind of right culture that we want to build in the company, right? So that’s why alpha was added there. To tell you about kV, we will never have these two month phases, three, three month phases, right? We need to have an end date for even the basic features like logging in logging out, like you said, launching a site, like these very basic features that in itself are not like no one would buy them right now kind of alpha is what no one would buy, right? Like, I won’t go in. Even though I buy a lot of software, I won’t go in and buy a software. I might, I might, I might, I might like, give a lot of feature ideas. But the thing is that this is like a feature just to give us confidence. You meet the stakeholders. Okay, this is the right track that we are going this is more of a change in the methodology
Michael:
in their brain. Yeah, that’s all we’re really trying to do there
Abdul:
for the developers as well. Right? Both like giving the developers confidence that okay, that this is something that’s because I remember when we were in sprint zero. I do remember like, we were talking about the containers and everything that the guys was a little Kabuki with reveal two containers. There are so many unknowns here. So but yesterday, they just did right so now they also more confident on their skills that no they say okay, we’ll get these things ironed out like before I used to know where you stop or we’ll we’ll have to do r&d on this yesterday so I’ll just get this knocked out on Monday. So this is the change in like tone that is coming with the developers as well because they’re they’re also getting confident because they are getting pushed that they have to kind of have something there and for us as well this has given me a new I think more confidence on okay how we are going how the team is kind of taking it up how they’re kind of taking the responsibilities things like that right just came exciting. That’s why I always said alpha is an internal phase right? It’s an alpha phase is internal this is just to give us and the team more confidence and what we are trying to do right so because I know that once we reach and if you look at it the alpha phase was very tight because like many people might know it’s right now Ramadan site, so we have shorter work hours, we have it coming in. So alpha was already very tight, right? But we just know we have to do it. We can we get we can decide on what we want to do. Quite a bit, we can limit the features and everything. But we have to have something there on 31st of may on first of June, we need to have a very basic idea, just so we all are more confident going into bigger kind of thing, right?
Michael:
And I would say that was the number one thing I think we said over and over and every interview was that we are going to set deadlines and we are not going to miss them. Right, we can shrink the scope to be small enough, so we hit those deadlines, but getting the mindset changed. That missing deadlines is okay, that’s not going to be okay. Because then we can start pushing more into the features or into the sprints to get everything done that we want to and we’re starting to see even after one week, the benefits of that I think they stayed late to make sure we hit that deadline. Right. And I appreciate all those guys that did that night. You know, we jumped on the phone and said that last night it was late for those guys doing that. But it was great to see them doing that and really buying into what we’re saying right? Like, hey, this is what we’re going to do. This is why because if we roll that Guess what, now we’re not hitting now we’re not hitting August for MHP. Now it’s October, Domino’s, great Domino’s if everything gets rolled out and everything has to then get straight, fetched, but I want you to get back to the MVP phase, what do you think defines the MHP phase as, as something different than the beta phases? Okay.
Abdul:
So I think, yep, for me, when I went, Okay, we have three months, right? We initially took a few months to get to the MVP phase. I said, MVP, for me, sounds doesn’t sound really good, right? It’s like a product that just might be okay. It’s usable. Like if I get if I got ionic WP as an MVP, when, when the thought is MVP, I kind of tried to change my kind of thought process there as well. That’s why I added the term happiness. That MVP always feels like a product that’s just barely kind of usable, right? That’s where it’s minimum wide or like, it might do something. We do have, you know, give us an MVP means that a person can sign up they can add their billing details. They can launch a site. And it works that for us is an MVP, right? If these things happen, we have the core of our product done better. This is not where a person will be happy, right? He won’t be happy to have this, right. So the happy minimum happiness product is like a product, which, if someone who’s already working with our competitor comes to us at that time and signs up, they won’t be disappointed, right? They’ll be okay. They know, okay, there’s a lot of features that are being developed. But because we’ve been actively developing, they will be seeing new things coming out every day every other day. So they know this is actively developed, they will be asked for feedback as well, that Okay, give us feedback. That’s something that I am kind of looking at how we can have a very quick feedback loop with the customers early adopters that come in to the company so how we can get the feedback rolling, how we can get that incorporated and what we do, but then the idea is that they will be okay. They have the minimum happiness they’ll have Okay, this is a product I can kind of live with for now. If these guys are doing all this stuff, like But when you think of it as a minimum viable product, you’re just thinking of having just the very core features, right? But when you think of, Okay, I need to replace, let’s say, like we discussed yesterday that we have two personas. One being Michael x and one being of those right tech. So we need to know Okay, what, what is the product that I can give Michael? And what is the product I can give up though, that will be okay with using it. They won’t be very, like, very happy. But they will be like, Okay, this is this works fine of the thing like this works. So that’s the idea behind it that they will be happy. Okay, I’m happy. I can use service. I’m content with it if these guys are making other things. Yeah, exactly. It’s just
more of a change of mindset. It’s just taking off taking of
Michael:
liability, or it is a huge it is, like minimal viable product is something that’s out there. You’re like, Yeah, not that not that not you’re not even that proud of Yeah, right. Like, but an M HP when it’s like like you said somebody comes there and they’re like, Oh, well this has potential Yep. Right. Like that’s the that’s what you want them to Feel Yeah. And that’s where we want to be at come. end of August. Right. So yeah, I think that kind of sums it up. I just really wanted to hammer home in HP area because I think that’s important. Now we’re kind of defining that and, and how we broken up these stages and helped change the mentality of our developers and our company power moving forward. So that’s kind of how we’ve divided our three initial months. We’ll see if we stay to it next week. Oh, I think we are I think we’re going to stay pretty solid to this. We have a good plan but there are a lot of things we should Yeah, we’ve been changed a lot of things in this company but I think with the best laid, you know, the these plans are laid well, and they are best laid plans. We are going to stay to them and see what happens but well, we’ll we’ll check back in you know, weekly as we do these kind of videos. Again, we’re going to get back into this doing this weekly as we had a little bit of a surge of training and business and a couple other things happen that kind of made things go a little bit sideways, but we’re back on the video train now. We’re moving forward again. So, this time he’s up duel. I’m Michael, and thanks for joining us and we’ll see you next time.