Company Context

Notion is expanding into a new product area: lightweight real-time team collaboration for frontline operations teams such as retail store managers, warehouse supervisors, and field service leads. The company has strong adoption among knowledge workers, but this segment currently relies on WhatsApp, spreadsheets, and paper checklists for daily coordination.

Problem

Leadership wants to test whether Notion can win in this adjacent market without building a full operations suite. Early research across 40 customer interviews shows three recurring needs: shift handoff visibility, task accountability, and fast issue reporting from mobile devices. However, the request backlog is broad: chat, task management, photo uploads, approvals, dashboards, offline mode, role-based permissions, and integrations with scheduling tools.

The team has 1 PM, 4 engineers, 1 designer, and 1 data analyst. They must launch an MVP in 10 weeks to 20 pilot customers. The goal is to validate whether this user segment has a strong enough unmet need to justify a dedicated roadmap. Shipping too much risks delay and a noisy signal; shipping too little risks a weak pilot and false negatives.

Deliverables

1. Define the target user and core job-to-be-done for the MVP.
2. Recommend which features should be included in the MVP versus deferred.
3. Explain the trade-offs behind your scoping decisions, including what you would explicitly not build.
4. Define how you would evaluate whether the MVP shows early product-market fit.
5. Identify the biggest risks to learning and how you would mitigate them during the pilot.

Constraints

• MVP must launch within 10 weeks.
• Team capacity is limited; only one major workflow can be built well.
• Mobile experience is required, but full offline support is out of scope for v1.
• Pilot customers expect enough functionality to replace at least one existing workflow.
• Success should be measured by learning velocity and user behavior, not revenue in the first phase.