MVPs
1 min read
The term of MVP is one of the most abused in product development. It is often used without shared definition and worse used to justify shipping bad products.
Whenever I hear a team say "We are shipping an MVP". I will ask, how do you define MVP? The most common answer is "its a minimum viable product". I will respond that I know what the acronym stands for what I am asking for is a definition. I am always surprised how many teams don't have an answer to this question.
I will offer my definition:
MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product.
An MVP is a product released to a statistically significant group of people that tests a single hypothesis.
It has measures and counter measures.
Its purpose is to gain enough understanding to provide a vantage point to determine what to build next.
Ideally, an MVP should:
Have enough value that people are willing to use it or buy it initially (solves a problem for people)
Demonstrates enough future benefit to retain early adopters and grow its audience (understands the initial and future audience)
Provides a feedback loop to guide future development (testable and gain insight)
By this definition a majority of things shipped at companies are not MVPs. They are a collection of what could be built in some time frame.
Coda
I know the concept of a Minimum Lovable Product is popular with designers because it attempts to prevent low quality things from shipping. While I am not opposed to this concept i think it can introduce unnecessary work in some situations. If you are just trying to see if something might work, minimum valuable is a better goal than lovable. People will get value from things that aren't necessary lovable. They are merely functional enough to meet a need or satisfy some job to be done. Lovable can come later.