In this episode, Amaury and Mitchie go over the last 2 levels of the prototyping process, where your MVP will gradually transform into an established product. This includes educating founders on the bare minimum of tech CEO's need to understand. Pre-order a copy of Amaury's new book, Startup Without a CTO, and get an early digital version two months before the official launch: http://startupwithoutcto.com/   Disclamer! This episode has a lot of technical terms. The idea is for you to get the concept more than memorizing the technologies. You can always refer to our notes and other content to address more specific topics in the prototyping stage.   4 levels of MVP Prototyping Level 0: No tech 0% Do everything or almost everything manually Level 1: Little tech, anyone can learn 1% Start automation and using existing tools Level 2: 5% Custom dev Real application with a bit of customization Level 3: 10- 15% Custom dev  Move on to proper development.   Is it necessary to go through all of them?   No, it's a self-assessment exercise to figure out where you should start. If you only have an idea without much market understanding, start from Level 0 . Make sure you know that this is going to have an audience. If you're already figured that out, you've been working on the industry for long enough, then you might start from Level 2. Or if you're not sure how to structure things at the beginning, maybe Level 1 is more up your alley.   The point is: if there's enough market understanding you can invest a little in a real functional app.     So when setting up a simple Wordpress website, headless CMS or a business intelligence tool -aka. a reporting tool- is not cutting it anymore, how do you move forward? Prototyping Level 2 5% of Tech : Real app with a bit of customization GOAL: To build a better Customer Experience (not just talking about graphic design, but also functionalities, experience, interactions… ) Use an app maker (ex. Bubble.is→ you can learn with Zeroqode) with (opensource) templates → Moodle/Edx Saas solution with a membership LMS/Business intelligence Reuse existing technologies for an SaaS - Solution What do we need to make it? So far we've been able to do things mostly by ourselves. We just needed a bit of help for the automation… Nothing really complex Now we will need a bit of a developer's and engineer's time to install the right tools, and combine them. Also identify resources on a global marketplace, or people that are good with specific development…   MVP Prototyping Level 3 10- 15% of Tech: At this level, the goal is to make the gradual transition to our own product. Developing the core of our application, still using most of the tools we have so far, Refactor the interface… Focusing on specific needs   GOAL: Get rid of what is inefficient, transform what works and standardize it. And keep using external services that are relevant and reliable!   A good example of what you would drop is Zapier. It's an extremely useful tool, but at this scale it becomes extremely unreliable, so stop using it. Move on to real cloud functions.   A great way to guarantee reliability is by moving onto real microservices, with the option of rollback or a fail-over process in case of failure.   What are Microservices? Instead of developing one big software that includes all of the actions one may ever ask of it, we create one small piece of software for each clear and independent feature or function. That small piece of software is referred to as a Microservice.   Let's assume that we want to recognize a text on an image. We can have a microservice that is going to take the image from one directory, analyze what is inside, and put the result in a database or maybe in a text file next to the image. And that's it, that's the whole purpose of that one specific microservice These microservices have been specifically designed for "small tasks", they are ready to go, reliable and optimized. Recognize what parts of your solution can be optimized by using existing APIs, and integrate them in your process. Then comes your innovative / disruptive side, you can identify the other kinds of functionalities that are maybe more specific to your solution and particularly to what you want to develop. Those can be custom developed to your needs snd those would represent that 15% of tech required in level 3 of prototyping your MVP Getting to know what's out there Reusing pieces of software Do not reinvent the wheel ! There are plenty of options out there for real Saas API Solutions, covering any need you might have. Making the most of them helps you transition onto building an entire ecosystem, where you can create future versions Docker: build, manage and secure all apps, from traditional applications to cutting-edge microservices Rapid API ( Marketplace ) AWS Azure Google Cloud (Anthos) IBM Definition - What does Legacy System mean? A legacy system, in the context of computing, refers to outdated computer systems, programming languages or application software that are used instead of available upgraded versions   By choosing to build an MVP, in some way we are creating legacy on purpose, because we don't know if things are going to work, and we don't want to spend too much money upfront… By starting with a microservice approach, we ensure that we will be able to move away from those legacy blocks and create more up-to-date and reliable solutions Transcript https://myctofriend.co/11#TRANSCRIPT   For more information about MyCTOfriend check: https://myctofriend.co

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