MVP: how product managers can define the scope of a new product launch
Minimum Viable Product, aka MVP: everyone talks about it, few Product Managers actually deliver it.
There is a lot of research and books on why start-ups and companies launching new products should adopt this approach. I’ve done a number of product launches myself and the good thing for me, is that every launch (successful or not) taught me some lessons. However, apart from the lessons that others learned, sometimes we need a checklist of best practices to follow along our way to a launch. Such a list could enable product managers to make sure that they keep focus and stay on the right track.
In this 2-part story, I try to summarise these best practices of launching MVP products under two main areas, which are unsurprisingly:
- Product, and
- Management
Part 1: ‘Product’ side of things
Understand the Business (Model):
When you’re in charge of launching a new product to the market, you have a blank page in front of you, and it’s up to you and your fellow team members to decide how to fill it. As the PM, you have to fill in the first bits, and you should start by understanding the business model very well. I don’t mean the 50 page business plan, and I don’t mean the mega-excel file with revenue & cost projections up to five years ahead. I mean being able to sketch a simple Business Model Canvas (BMC) for the product.
In order to fill out the BMC correctly, it’s best for you to work with your business stakeholders, which can be the cofounders, general managers, sales, marketing and operations teams, etc. I found it always very useful to have the first phase of the discovery on the business side. This is because most of the information is there, very close to you, and sometimes it is even documented in a decent way. And while you sketch the business model, of course you will have to go through the business plan, the pitch deck to the investors or the excel files with revenue & cost projections. However, the beauty of the BMC is that it will put boundaries over concepts and it will make you focus on one thing at a time, improving your learning experience. Most importantly, it will be a simple, 1 page document, and therefore it will force you to include only the most important characteristics of the business.
The BMC is only the first step of your discovery. Once you know what your stakeholders know, think, want and preach for their business, it’s time for you to face reality.
Talk with potential customers/users:
The difference between a great product manager and a good one is the ability to fill in the knowledge gap between the company’s assumptions and the market’s reality. Talking with customers and users is crucial to identify this knowledge gap. While the business model can make sense and the business plan can be flawless, without an accurate and valuable product offering, the launch would fail.
Usually managers think that their role is to create value for the business. They therefore focus on increasing revenues and reducing costs. The difference of the Product manager is that we have to focus on creating value for the customers and users while generating revenues and reducing costs for the business. The value for the business will be relevant if and only if we can offer products that will help the customers do their jobs easier, solve their problems, and put a smile on their faces. This is shortly described as the product-market fit and trust me, no one will focus on this topic as much as us, product managers.
In order to understand what the market really wants, you will have to do user research not only on paper or data visualisation tools, but also qualitatively, talking to potential customers and observing them. Through these encounters you have to identify what they are trying to achieve (jobs to be done), what gets them frustrated about the current alternatives (pains), and what makes them happy (gains). These findings will be helpful for the product team when they will try to come up with services, pain relievers and gain creators.
Adopt a ruthless MVP approach:
At work, my favourite question is “why?”. Stakeholders or customers constantly ask for new features. If I have to understand their importance, priority, or most importantly, their purpose, there is no better question to ask. Asking the why question enough times always lets me understand the business opportunity or the customer problem and allocate a priority to it.
Usually, when you’re working on a minimum product, you don’t have enough budget or time to do everything that has a purpose. You will have many occasions in which your stakeholders will ask you “will that be in the MVP?”. A great product manager must ask that question to themselves before the stakeholder. You might think that it is a difficult question to answer every time, for every feature request. You’d be wrong.
When working on an MVP, the goal is simple: get to the market and make your first sales as soon as possible so that you can start learning from your customers and improve your offering. So the answer to the question “will that be in the MVP?” is rather simple. All you have to do is ask yourself: “do I need this feature to sell the first product/service?”. This is crucial. We are not interested in the 1000th sale, and we are not even interested in the 100th sale. As long as we can sell without ‘that feature’, the rule of thumb is to leave it outside of the MVP scope.
Of course, this is not always doable. An e-commerce start-up selling pet toys might adopt this approach easier than a multinational fintech launching a new product in a new market. The more complicated your launch is, the more questions you will have to ask yourself. “Do I need this feature for the minimum customer service?”, or “is this feature a legal requirement?”, or “can I manage the operational side of things without this feature?” are all viable questions when one is deciding the scope of the MVP.
Once you’ve understood the business model and learned what the customers want, your job of defining the MVP and committing to it ruthlessly will be much easier. At this point, the most difficult part of the product work is done, however this is the moment when the real challenge begins, because now you have to prove that you’re a great manager.
Hope that you enjoyed reading this article and that it will help you launch your next product better! Make sure to give me a like or a share if it was useful and please follow me for more product management content!
