PMP Q#13 – Value delivery working in an unknown area?
Q13. The agile team is tasked to build a smartphone application to support drug users’ rehabilitation. Unfortunately, the team cannot find volunteer test users fitting the profile.
Which option would be most effective to ensure the best product value is delivered?
A. Do a detailed requirement analysis for user needs.
B. Release the basic version of the application and learn from its usage.
C. Develop the product based on similar competitor products.
D. Create a detailed WBS to capture the project requirements.
Here, the team needs a proper understanding of project requirements. Apart from that, the team also needs access to validate the solution. So, learning through actual usage is the only option that needs iterative and incremental development. Using iterative and incremental development, the team gradually builds up the features and functions and doesn’t wait until each of these is complete before releasing.
The question mentions that the team is Agile – so it is already following iterative and incremental development. In this way, option B is Best – Release the basic version of the application and learn from its usage.
Let’s look at the other option to see why they are not the best for this situation –
Option A – “Do a detailed requirement analysis for user needs.” This option is a wrong answer because we never do detailed requirement analysis when there is requirement uncertainty.
Option C – “Develop the product based on similar competitor products.” – It could be possible when requirements are unclear. You can take the help of competitor products to understand basic App features. But it is not a wise idea to copy App. In the case of copy, why would your customers buy your App? After a basic App version, you can evolve the product based on your customer’s feedback. So, the team can first release a Minimum Viable Product as a basic version. MVP is minimal, so there is less risk. For MVP, the team can use a hypothesis to connect the problem to be solved. During MVP development, the team does a minimum amount of work to validate this hypothesis. Once a basic version is released per the hypothesis, the team learns how users respond to it. Using this learning team decides the further direction of the development. It is a good idea to take help from the competitors’ App to develop a hypothesis for the MVP. But copying is not a beneficial idea.
Product D – “Create a detailed WBS to capture the project requirements.” – Again, detailed analysis is not advised in case of requirement uncertainties.
