9. Task
The first unit of work is the one-month column of the roadmap, read as a definition: what is in, what is out, the use cases with acceptance criteria, and the goal it exists to move. It is the bottom of the ladder, which means it is the only level that gets built, and its legitimacy comes entirely from the five levels above it. If it cannot be traced up, it is not the first task. It is the first feature.
- How do you define an MVP from a product strategy?
- What should a first version include and exclude?
- How do you write use cases and acceptance criteria for an MVP?
§The question: what is the ?
§Six levels down, produces one thing that gets built. This chapter is about reading the one-month column as a definition rather than a to-do list, and about the discipline of leaving out.
§ 9.1The first version as a consequence#
§Eric Ries's was defined by what it is for: the smallest thing that lets the team learn what it most needs to learn. The ladder sharpens that. The first task is the smallest thing that moves the first goal, which validates the first bet, which is the first step toward the vision, which serves the mission. Read upward, every element of the first version has a reason. Read downward, the mission produced this and nothing else.
§That is what "a consequence, not a vote" means. If the team votes on what to build first, the result is whatever the room liked most. If the team reads the ladder, the result is whatever the first bet requires, and the room's preferences enter only where the ladder is silent.
| Weak first version | Strong first version |
|---|---|
| "MVP: loyalty app with profile, points, check-in, payments and reservations. Launch across all brands." | "Act one: the guest builds a profile and sees her tier. No points, no check-in, no payments, no operations screen. One brand family. Goal: sixty percent completion, unprompted, by day ninety. Out: everything the second bet depends on." |
| "Ship the core features and iterate based on feedback." | "Use case 1: a guest with a reservation opens the link, completes name, preferences and birthday in under a minute, sees her tier. Acceptance: completes without help on a phone; no login required; tier visible on the final screen. Use case 2: a guest without a reservation reaches the same profile from a card on the table." |
§ 9.2Scope: in, and out in writing#
§The first version is defined as much by its exclusions as its contents, and the exclusions are written. Ryan Singer's no-gos are the right instrument: a short list of things this piece of work explicitly does not do, so that when the idea arrives during the build, and it will, the answer is already on the page.
§For the hospitality group, out meant: no loyalty economy, because the field had rejected the unit; no check-in, because it had failed six of six and needed redesign; no payments, because they depended on check-in; no operations screen, because the operation was two and bet two waits for bet one. Each exclusion cited its evidence. None was a judgment about the idea's value. All were judgments about sequence.
§ 9.3Use cases with acceptance criteria#
§Three to five use cases, each a situation a real person is in, each with criteria a stranger could check. Gojko Adzic's specification by example is the discipline: write the criterion as a concrete example of the behavior, not as a requirement. Not "the profile is easy to complete" but "a first-time guest completes it on her own phone, without help, in under a minute."
§The acceptance criteria are also the test plan for the goal. If the goal is sixty percent completion, the criteria describe what completion means and under what conditions, so that the number read on day ninety is the number the bet was about.
§ 9.4Deferred is not discarded, again#
§The first version's exclusions go to the roadmap's later column with their promotion criteria. This is the same rule as the previous chapter, repeated here because the first task is where it is broken most often. A team building act one will be asked, weekly, why payments is not in it, and the answer is on the board: it moves when check-in holds. The team that cannot point to the board will add payments in month two, and the ladder will have been for nothing.
§ 9.5What comes out#
§A first-version definition: the goal it moves, the scope in and out, three to five use cases with acceptance criteria, the appetite in weeks, and the technical path. That is the bottom of the ladder. Part III is about how a group of five fills the ladder without a strategy department, which is to say, how the hospitality group actually did it.
The first unit of work is a consequence of the ladder, not a vote. Scope, use cases, acceptance criteria, and the goal it moves. Everything else is out, in writing.
- Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (2011), on the minimum viable product. theleanstartup.com
- Ryan Singer, Shape Up (2019), on shaping, appetite and no-gos. basecamp.com/shapeup
- Gojko Adzic, Specification by Example (2011), on acceptance criteria as examples. gojko.net/books/specification-by-example