Make Your MVP an MVP

Add Minimum Viable Product to the list of good ideas that have become buzzwords and as a result horribly misapplied. Once framed as a way to get validated learning about your product, it is now misconstrued in some circles as an excuse to build crap. Have no fear, this week we’re sharing some resources to make Minimum Viable Product a MVP in your product management tool kit again.

Meanwhile, in product news, see the story behind Hype and how Jira helps teams do their own thing but talk about it consistently. In addition, us AI to write your developer docs and keep track of all your tasks.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP): What is it and what’s its purpose? Minimum viable product is a recent term that outlines a phenomenon that has existed long before in product management. It has gone from a fringe concept among startups to a widely adopted idea in all industries, though every company takes a unique approach to MVP development and adoption. A great MVP can serve as a rock-solid foundation for a great company, but only with a proper understanding of an MVP and reasonable expectations. The folks at Reforge cover all the key info related to the purpose of an MVP, plus what to expect in terms of development, execution, methodology, and more.

Minimum Viable Product revisited. The straightforward interpretation of MVP is a product that is built to gain feedback rather than built to maximize sales. Kent Beck finds it helpful to extend the idea. Here’s his interpretation: “Minimum” is a reminder to invest as little as possible to get the next burning question answered or assumption validated. “Viable” is a reminder to build enough to answer that question. “Product” is a reminder to work from particulars.

Is It Time to Break Up With Minimum Viable Products? When the concept of building an MVP prototype reached the mainstream, startups and product teams across the world fell in love. The right principles had finally come along that made their approach to product development feel validated. But years of being a committed partner to building MVPs has left some teams feeling cracks in the relationship. There a few tweaks you can make that will bring the romance back with MVPs, bringing with it a greater emphasis on your end users and increasing the chances of customers loving you back. Chris Freeman shares some relationship advice for you and your MVP framework to get your product delivery process back on track.

Deep-Dive: Behind the product: Superhuman. Founded by Rahul Vohra in 2014, Superhuman has helped users tackle their inboxes with unprecedented speed, cutting down hours of email management each week. But as artificial intelligence emerged as a game changer in the tech landscape, Superhuman had to evolve, and fast. It wasn’t just about keeping up with the competition—it was about maintaining their core promise: delivering the fastest email experience possible. That’s when Raul and his team made a bold decision to pivot their focus toward AI, partnering with OpenAI and fundamentally transforming their approach to email. Sean Steigerwald sat down with Rahul to hear the inside story behind Superhuman’s foray into AI and how it has redefined the company’s mission.

Mastering SaaS Pricing: From MVP to IPO. Building great products is hard enough — but pricing them can be just as tricky. Pricing and packaging is one of the most powerful, yet overlooked, levers to drive growth in a SaaS business. In this talk from Kyle Poyar of Openview Partners, you’ll learn how to approach pricing & packaging in a data-driven matter, gain an understanding of the best monetization strategies for each stage of your company’s growth — including at the MVP stage.

Do you like what you see?

If you like what you're reading, go to ProductCollective.com and subscribe. That way, you can get this newsletter in your inbox every Friday before everyone else.

This week on Rocketship.fm

The most common product strategy mistakes (and how to avoid them). In this episode of Rocketship.FM, Mike Belsito sits down with renowned product management expert Roman Pichler to dive deep into the world of product strategy. Roman shares his expertise on common mistakes product teams make when crafting their strategies and offers practical advice on how to avoid these pitfalls. From the importance of having a clear, evidence-based strategy to the critical elements that should be included, Roman provides a wealth of knowledge that product managers at all levels can benefit from.

Product Management News: Week of September 23, 2024

The hype behind Hype. YouTube recently announced a series of product updates to ignite creativity, drive business, and connect people on the platform. One of those updates was Hype, a new way for people to rally around emerging creators they believe in. In a unique twist on a product announcement, the team behind Hype not only introduces the product, but also dives into how they built Hype and why they’re excited about it.

Stop storing your ROI in a field called “story points”. The folks behind Jira Product Discovery recently introduced Global Fields. This new feature seeks to tackle the chaos that sometimes ensues when teams are able to craft their own approach and use completely different terminology in the process. Global Fields allow you to create a field that your organization can use across multiple projects so teams can maintain autonomy, but convey consistent information to executive leadership.

Never say “oh crap, we still have to write the docs” again. The folks at Hashode created Docs to make it easy for you to build, customize, and scale your docs as quickly as your team codes. Say goodbye to endless upkeep as Docs grows your documentation along with your product. That means your customers may actually be able to trust your documentation again.

One task list to rule them all. If you find, despite your best efforts, that your task list lives in seventeen different tools, Hoop may be the one tool it makes sense to add to the mix. From meeting to Slack to yet another meeting, Hoop captures and prioritize your tasks to create a global task list across all your teams, with AI at the core.

Resources and news curated by Kent J McDonald