Product People joined as Interim Product Managers to Craft an MVP from Scratch

The Client: Little Journey

Little Journey was founded in 2018. Since then, Little Journey has grown and developed, supporting thousands of families across the UK and further afield. Little Journey aims to support all children to better health. The company believes that building dedicated tools for children & families can lead to improved healthcare experience. They provide engaging, interactive, and age-appropriate content designed to psychologically prepare and support children and their families throughout healthcare interactions, improve mental and physical well-being, and enhance patient experiences of care.

Lego Project: The LEGO Foundation "Play for All" Accelerator awarded a grant to Little Journey to develop a new module for the app called “A Little About Me”. This module uses interactive play to help children communicate their healthcare needs effectively, promoting personalized care and a deeper understanding of patients by clinicians. The goal is to empower children with the knowledge and tools to take control of their health and well-being, resulting in improved quality of care and better health outcomes.

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The Mission: Interim Product Manager for the Lego Project

Little Journey hired us to lead the discovery processes to develop an MVP that would help children communicate their healthcare needs effectively, promoting personalized care and a deeper understanding of patients by clinicians, supported by the Lego Foundation. The aim was to delineate pain points and ideate solutions, produce mock-ups within 2 months, and finalize the “A Little About Me” MVP module within a seven-month timeframe. This module was designed to build on top of the existing Little Journey application.

Upon joining, the team lacked a dedicated Product Manager and needed guidance to transition from extensive research to the solution ideation phase.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑The team consisted of:

• 2 Designers
• 1 Researcher
• 1 Content Writer (shared resource)
• 1 Psychologist (shared resource)
• A new development team was hired for the Lego Project when we were ready to hand over features to the development team:
  • 1 Lead FE Developer, 2 Interim FE Developers
  • 1 BE Developer, 2 QA Members & 1 QA Lead (shared resources)

Addressed Challenges

We effectively navigated through various challenges, such as establishing standardized working procedures for our team, the absence of a dedicated development team during discovery, and solution definition phases, synthesizing extensive research data, and guiding diverse team members unfamiliar with product development.

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Our Main Quest: Finalize the MVP Successfully in 7 Months

Launch: Onboarded Very Fast

In our first month;

We defined MVP scope through a design sprint within one week.

• We reviewed and summarized findings from the research phase to be digested easily and shared with the team to have a shared understanding.
• Two weeks after joining, the design sprint was organized with all stakeholders (CPO, the design, research, CTO, content team, psychologists, etc.) to refine product vision, create personas, map out their journeys, identify pain points, and ideate on solutions.
• As time was of the essence, unclear solutions were put on a parking lot for future evaluation. We focused instead on what we could ship fast that would bring value for both the user and the company. The next step was evaluating the effort required in terms of design and development to prioritize the features and better define the details of the solution.
• We established the MVP and its subsequent phases, based on thorough assessments of efforts and values.
• After one week, designers started sketching for some ideas on Figma and researchers started testing initial concepts validating our assumptions by testing the initial concepts.
• We set up a continuous feedback loop with the research team, ensuring we would get access to target users or prospects every 1-2 weeks.

We successfully developed comprehensive user personas for the Little Journey application and portal. This was achieved with real user insights.

• Persona workshops were organized to create user and buyer personas (children, parents, clinicians, hospital administrators). Personas helped the team grasp user perspectives, foster solution-oriented thinking tailored to user needs, and cultivate empathy across different projects. This process was integral in aligning product development with genuine user experiences and expectations. The company continued using the persona workshop and documentation structure to create new personas for other projects.

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Explore and Conquer: Solved for the Client

MVP Development Process: From Conceptualization to Implementation

• After the design sprint, we had ideas for the main features of the MVP. We started with the ones that would provide the highest value to the children persona. We created a high-level logic for prioritized features, prepared draft user flows with initial prototypes, and organized refinement sessions with the lead developer, designers, and researchers to agree on the logic for each feature by highlighting the value they would bring the users before finalizing feature definitions.
• After these sessions, we finalized the skeleton of the MVP, mapped out how all the features would be connected, prioritized them and documented features with user personas, problems, feature description, success metrics, out-of-scope, UX flow, prototypes, validation, copy, stakeholders, dependencies, and risk sections on Notion Feature pages.
• Feature Register Contents on Notion
• The proposal was reviewed by all the team members and validated before the design and content team prepared the first mock-ups to be tested with our primary users.
• Weekly meetings were held with all stakeholders to discuss research findings. Research findings and comments of stakeholders led to iterative design and logic adaptations.
• Upon validating the solutions, detailed Jira tickets were created for the development team to begin building the MVP.

The Process

• This process was underpinned by continuous discovery, iterative agile approach, and co-creation with target user groups, ensuring that the MVP was developed in alignment with the needs of all personas.

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Leading the Internal User Acceptance Testing

• Post-MVP implementation, comprehensive internal User Acceptance Testing (UAT) across the company was initiated. Then, we prioritized feedback from participants and identified the ones that we needed to solve and created Jira tickets for improvement areas and bugs.
• This inclusive approach allowed for rapid identification and resolution of issues, involving both internal team members and broader company staff. The exercise not only streamlined the MVP but also acquainted the commercial team with the product, better preparing them for client interactions.

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Driving Data-Driven Decision Making

• A one-week pilot was planned to test the MVP with a hospital. Essential metrics were established to gauge necessary improvements and user behavior for the one-week pilot.
• All metrics for the module were prepared and prioritized using the Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) technique in collaboration with the lead developer. Additionally, we conceptualized sample visualizations for the analytics dashboard, laying the groundwork for comprehensive tracking of application usage and module performance.

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Developing A Rollout Plan

• After presenting the MVP to the LEGO Foundation and successfully securing a grant, our efforts turned toward integrating MVP into hospital processes. We kept hosting interviews with hospitals to discover further improvements.
• A roll out plan was created with the commercial, compliance, content teams. Post-mission, the team continued these efforts to ensure seamless integration into hospital processes.

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Delivered Outcomes

The success of the MVP developed for Little Journey has been significant, receiving positive feedback from users and stakeholders. The project's impact was further validated by its feature on BBC News, showcasing its importance and the recognition it has garnered.

💡 Created the MVP scope from scratch and coordinated the work among all team members (the development team, psychologists, designers, researchers, content writers, compliance manager etc.) to finalize the MVP in 7 months.

💡 Closed the second round of funding from the Lego Foundation successfully for MVP enhancement based on the developed scope.

💡 Established efficient workflows to enhance team productivity and created comprehensive documentation.

💡 Conducted in-depth interviews, and surveys with buyer personas to integrate the MVP into their work, defining a process that could be used across all teams.

💡 Guided the new Associate Product Manager to develop in Product Management.

Our mission was extended twice. They hired us to conduct discovery processes, but then our mission was extended to work on the delivery side. The mission was extended again to lead the testing process, and talk with the buyer persona to integrate the MVP into their processes.

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