CPI Rapid Prototyping & MVP Development 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In the context of MVP development, what does 'validated learning' primarily refer to?
- Confirming that the product meets regulatory standards
- Empirically testing business assumptions through customer experiments (Correct answer)
- Ensuring the development team has learned the tech stack
- Validating that the MVP matches the original design specification
Correct answer: Empirically testing business assumptions through customer experiments
Validated learning means running experiments with real customers to test whether core business hypotheses are true or false.
Question 2: Which prototyping technique involves creating a clickable but non-functional simulation of a digital product?
- Paper prototype
- Functional prototype
- Interactive wireframe (mid-fi prototype) (Correct answer)
- Proof of concept
Correct answer: Interactive wireframe (mid-fi prototype)
An interactive wireframe or mid-fidelity prototype simulates navigation and interactions without any real back-end functionality.
Question 3: A startup builds a landing page describing a product that doesn't exist yet to measure sign-up interest. This is an example of which MVP type?
- Concierge MVP
- Wizard of Oz MVP
- Smoke test MVP (Correct answer)
- Piecemeal MVP
Correct answer: Smoke test MVP
A smoke test MVP (or fake door test) gauges demand for a product before it is built by presenting it as if it were real.
Question 4: What is the PRIMARY risk of skipping low-fidelity prototyping and jumping straight to high-fidelity prototypes?
- The prototype will look too polished for stakeholders
- Teams invest significant time and cost before validating core concepts (Correct answer)
- Low-fidelity tools are required by ISO innovation standards
- Engineers will have nothing to code from
Correct answer: Teams invest significant time and cost before validating core concepts
High-fidelity prototypes are expensive to build and change, so fundamental flaws discovered late waste considerable resources.
Question 5: When applying timeboxing to rapid prototyping sprints, what is the main benefit?
- It guarantees a fully functional product at sprint end
- It forces prioritization and prevents scope creep (Correct answer)
- It eliminates the need for stakeholder reviews
- It allows the team to skip user testing
Correct answer: It forces prioritization and prevents scope creep
Timeboxing creates a fixed deadline that forces teams to prioritize the most critical features and avoid endless refinement.
Question 6: Which metric is MOST relevant for determining whether an MVP has achieved product-market fit?
- Number of features shipped
- Retention rate / cohort retention curve flattening (Correct answer)
- Code test coverage percentage
- Time to first deployment
Correct answer: Retention rate / cohort retention curve flattening
A flattening cohort retention curve shows that a meaningful percentage of users keep returning, indicating genuine product-market fit.
Question 7: In design thinking, the 'prototype' stage is meant to produce artifacts that are:
- Production-ready and fully tested
- Cheap and fast enough to fail quickly and learn (Correct answer)
- Approved by the legal department before user testing
- Identical to the final product specification
Correct answer: Cheap and fast enough to fail quickly and learn
Design thinking prototypes are intentionally rough and inexpensive so teams can learn from failure without large investments.
CPI Rapid Prototyping & MVP Development 2
In the context of MVP development, what does 'validated learning' primarily refer to?