课程: Agile Requirements Foundations

Minimum viable product (MVP)

课程: Agile Requirements Foundations

Minimum viable product (MVP)

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- You've probably heard the term MVP, but in an agile context we are not talking about the most valuable player. MVP in an agile context stands for minimum viable product. It's the version of a product that balances cost, risk, and value. It's a term that's thrown around a lot on agile teams, and yet few really understand it. Minimum viable product is about making sure we do not over or under engineer a product. We don't want to work really hard to find out that all or part of what we built wasn't needed. And, on the other hand, we don't want to discover our solution was too little too late. It's about learning quickly and satisfying early adopters. It's about deploying just enough quickly enough to confirm the product is viable and learn what's needed next in the product. It's about keeping our work small and flexible, so if other priorities for the organization are important we can pivot to work on other things, while still delivering value with current work. I prefer to discuss minimum viable thinking over MVP. Minimum viable thinking helps the team focus on what really matters and to avoid unnecessary features or feature details. It also helps the team deliver work faster by discussing and developing each feature to the right depth and breadth. The product owner and business analyst are key players in defining what's viable, and in helping the team determine what's minimally viable to satisfy customer needs, while learning more about the customer and balancing cost, time, and risk. The minimum viable can be at the product, release, and feature level. For each feature, or slice of a feature, it's important to define the minimum viable. It gives us the right focus when identifying and prioritizing backlog items. Take a look at the exercise file that outlines the online coffee store case study and it's payment function. The payments piece is broken out into many pieces. Defining which pieces are included and what's minimum viable is a critical dialogue the teams needs to have. As an agile BA you play a role in facilitating and preparing for this conversation by defining these breakdowns. When we're thinking in terms of what's viable, useful, and marketable, we efficiently deliver no more and no less of a product or feature than what's needed to meet the goals. Agile BA's use their skills and techniques to discover minimum viability. They elicit, analyze, and conceptualize. And, most importantly, they tell the story. They create a shared understanding of what minimum viable is with the team. Great agile BA's use diagrams, examples, and stories to help teams stay focused and efficient. It's less important to document minimum viability, and far more important to communicate and make sure the team understands the concept in the context of the solution. You'll be the team's most valuable player if you keep everyone focused on MVP.

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