How a viral video helped me design my MVP

If you’ve ever worked as product manager or a technologist working within a complex technology ecosystem, you’ve likely had a conversation like this before.

Usually tho, it’s a little less humourless…

About a year ago, I came across that video. I chuckled along — it’s funny ‘cause it’s true — and promptly forgot about it.

One year later

As I was building the MVP for the Slate, I came across it again. It stuck me, this is the type of problem I’m trying to help solve.

Highlighting and communicating dependancies between microservices, architectural decisions and product requirements is hard. So I took the video and tried to work out two things.

Does the Slate have all the functionality there that they describe?

What would this technology estate even look like if they used the Slate?

The results

After some tweaking and a missed piece of functionality (“deprecation notices, how could I have forgotten those?!”), I had a result.

A service specification for Entropy Khaos Service (EKS) which is being deprecated

A service specification for Omega Star, the replacement for EKS

An architectural decision that everything should support ISO timestamps

And of course, Galatcus, the all-knowing user service provider aggregator.

Could the Slate have helped?

Would the Slate have stopped an awkward conversation between a Product Manager and Developer that ended in crying? I’m not sure.

Would the Product Manager have known about how the services interrelate, what the blocker for Birthday Boy is and why? I’d say so.

I know that it’s an exaggerated scenario, but it’s pretty close to the truth as well. It also gave me a nice “demo-able” example for people to see/interact with the service.

Overall, it felt like a worthwhile endeavour. Although I’m sure I’ve missed something, somewhere.