How do you define a 'Minimum Viable Product' (MVP)?
Summary: Here I offer a working definition of MVPs, and call out a dimension that's often missed: context.
“Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien ” – Voltaire
Roughly translated, it means “perfect is the enemy of good”.
In product development, the concept of a ‘minimum viable product’ (MVP) aims to diffuse the ongoing struggle between ‘perfect’ and ‘good’ by creating a framework that balances excellence with delivery.
MVPs unpacked
Here let’s lean on Marty Cagan from the Silicon Valley Product Group:
“…if you’ve been around software products for a while, you know that term [MVP] is used in many different ways … there’s often a lot of confusion about what this really means in practice.
You can find it defined as the smallest possible experiment to test a specific hypothesis, all the way up to the tangible realization of a product vision.
[This] confusion is not helping product teams, and this is simply too important of a concept to have so much ambiguity.
I have long defined a minimum viable product as the smallest possible product that has three critical characteristics: people choose to use it or buy it; people can figure out how to use it; and we can deliver it when we need it with the resources available – also known as valuable, usable and feasible.
I love the concept popularized by Eric Ries of the smallest possible experiment to test a specific hypothesis, but I refer to that as an “MVP Test” so that people don’t confuse an experiment with a product.”
Marty’s definition is helpful and fits well with how we approach product at Morningstar.
Context matters
There’s an additional dimension though that’s important: context.
Who’s building the MVP and for whom?
An existing business, for example, is held to higher standards than that of a start up. We have existing clients and a beloved brand. Errors matter more to us than a start up.
Secondly, the financial services industry requires certain minimum standards to be met before you even participate. Clients entrust us with their savings and with that comes a requirement for higher standards (security, etc). The regulatory environment in which we operate also restrains how we operate. ‘Testing and learning’ takes on a stricter meaning in financial services.
To ensure our product is ‘viable’ the ‘minimum’ is a lot higher than you might first imagine.
Getting the balance right is hard, and my suspicion is we tend to too much risk aversion, especially in financial services.
At its core, an MVP is about beginning something. It’s about starting to collect real data. It’s about finding out how you’re wrong and adapting. Importantly, it’s about shifting from making decisions based solely on professional expertise to making decisions that marry insights with data.
I'd love to hear your thoughts. How do you think about MVPs? Does the business/industry you're in matter? How do you make trade-offs?
Product Strategy Executive
7 年Jason, I absolutely agree that the bar for MVP for an existing company is different (i.e. higher) than a startup. While there are tradeoffs in either direction - wait too long and risk getting beat by competition, release too soon and risk disappointing current customers - the majority of the confusion I see is finding the line where there is enough user research to release for "real-world" usage (aka the MVP). For startups, there's almost no risk to releasing too soon (shameful failure? Just relabel and try again). For existing businesses, knowing when enough is enough comes from an intimate understanding of you customer's tolerance levels. And there it is, once again, product management comes down to really understanding your customers.
Product leader | Lifetimely by AMP
7 年Love to hear your thoughts on this Anu George
Business Analyst and Product Management/Marketing
7 年When I think of MVPs, I think of problems and outcomes. I think of the cheapest, easiest, fastest, effective method that you can use to learn more about a problem or an outcome and then use that learning to validate what you think will help your customers achieve outcomes that they seek. And that method(s) could be a product, a Facebook group, customer survey, sales feedback, landing page, search marketing campaigns, videos etc. In other words, anything that lets you learn about what you would like to build that is likely to help your customers achieve the outcomes that they seek. And the MVP, as a concept, applies to enterprise product as easily as it does to a startup product. And by a product, I mean any product in any industry (not just software in which MVP is most widely recognized). It does not matter what industry you are in.
VP of Consumer Product at Optiwatt | Co-Founder at Prodify
7 年I like the valuable, usable and feasible definition for NEW products. Often I heard MVP used when talking about an existing product (ex. replatforming) and I think it's the wrong context - at that point you're not trying to validate the commercial viability of a product (will people pay for it?) but should be focused on what are the milestones between the current state of the product and the vision for where you'd want it to go.
Product leader | Lifetimely by AMP
7 年Interested to get your views Zach Gazak & Toby Heap, especially from a financial service perspective.